'V* 

Substance  of  Socialism 

John  Spargo 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
RIVERSIDE 


The  Substance   of   Socialism 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  JOHN  SPARGO 

SOCIALIST   THEORY 

THE  SOCIALISTS,  WHO  THEY  ARE  AND  WHAT 

THEY  STAND  FOR 
SOCIALISM,  A  SUMMARY  AND  INTERPRETATION 

OF  SOCIALIST  PRINCIPLES 
CAPITALIST  AND  LABORER 
THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  SOCIALISM 
THE  SPIRITUAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN 

SOCIALISM 

SOCIALIST  READINGS  FOR  CHILDREN  (illustrated) 
SIDELIGHTS  ON  CONTEMPORARY  SOCIALISM 

SOCIAL  QUESTIONS 

THE  BITTER  CRY  OF  THE  CHILDREN  (illustrated) 
THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  THE  MILK  QUESTION 
(illustrated) 

BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDIES 
THE  SOCIALISM  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS  (illustrated) 
THE  MARX  HE  KNEW  (illustrated) 
KARL  MARX:  His  LIFE  AND  WORK  (illustrated) 


The 
Substance  of  Socialism 


BY 

JOHN    SPARGO 


NEW    YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 

1911 


Copyright,  1909 
BY  B.   W.   HUEBSCH 

First  Printing,  November,  1909 
Second  Printing,  June,  1911 


PRINTED  IN  U.  S.  A. 


flo 

WALTER   RAUSCHENBUSCH 
FIDEI  DEFENSOR 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I    THE  SOCIALIST  HOPE 15 

II    PRIVATE  PROPERTY  AND  PERSONAL  LIBERTY 

IN  THE  SOCIALIST  STATE 65 

III    THE  MORAL  VALUE  OF  CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  105 


FOREWORD 

THE  first  part  of  this  little  volume  con- 
sists of  an  address  which,  somewhat 
abridged  and  modified,  was  delivered 
at  a  Socialist  Conference  in  Boston.  The  sec- 
ond part  consists  of  a  paper  contributed,  in 
June,  1909,  to  the  North  American  Review, 
and  reprinted  here,  slightly  revised,  through 
the  courtesy  of  the  editor  and  publishers  of 
that  periodical.  The  third  and  last  consists 
of  a  stenographic  report  of  a  lecture  delivered 
in  Cooper  Union,  New  York  City,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  People's  Institute,  revised  for 
this  publication. 

Probably  no  article  upon  the  subject  has 
ever  been  more  widely  discussed  than  the  pa- 
per from  the  North  American  Review.  Hun- 
dreds of  newspaper  editorials  were  written 
about  it,  and  thousands  of  correspondents 
wrote  me  from  all  parts  of  the  world  con- 
[9] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism* 

cerning  it.  Most  of  the  newspaper  com- 
ments were  such  as  to  gratify  any  writer,  and 
the  letters  were  such  as  to  indicate  general 
satisfaction. 

But  one  newspaper  writer,  the  gentleman 
who  writes  for  the  Boston  Transcript  under 
the  pseudonym  of  "  The  Social  Settler,"  was 
greatly  disturbed  to  discover  that  I  was  not 
what  he  termed  an  "  orthodox  Socialist."  He 
went  further,  and  charged  that  I  was  not 
acting  in  good  faith;  that  I  was  the  leader 
of  a  small  group  of  Socialists  who  make  it 
their  business  to  do  propaganda  "  window 
dressing  " — "  glossing  over  the  disagreeable 
features  of  Socialism  "  to  catch  unwary  gud- 
geons with  our  bait. 

Now,  of  course,  I  care  rather  less  than 
nothing  at  all  about  being  "  orthodox."  For 
me  the  only  orthodoxy  is  truth,  error  the  only 
heresy.  While  I  have  called  myself  a 
"  Marxist,"  and  believe  that  I  have  fairly 
earned  the  right  to  do  so  by  many  years 
given  to  earnest  and  careful  exposition  of 
Marx's  theories,  I  have  never  regarded  Marx 
[10] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

as  a  pope,  nor  believed  that  the  last  word 
of  wisdom  was  spoken  by  him.  From  time 
to  time,  therefore,  I  have  freely  and  frankly 
expressed  opinions  upon  matters  of  theory 
and  policy  contrary  to  those  of  Marx. 

While,  therefore,  I  am  not  at  all  concerned 
about  my  orthodoxy,  I  am  somewhat  jealous 
of  my  good  name,  and  cannot  lightly  pass 
over  the  charge  that  I  am  engaged,  with  some 
"  assistants,"  in  misrepresenting  the  Socialist 
position  and  carrying  on  a  propaganda  of  de- 
ceit. My  connection  with  the  Socialist  move- 
ment has  involved  too  much  suffering  and 
sacrifice  during  many  years  to  lend  support 
to  such  a  charge  as  that. 

It  is  not  for  the  sake  of  my  reputation  as 
an  honest  and  sincere  thinker  that  I  refer  here 
to  the  atrabilious  charge  of  "  The  Social  Set- 
tler," however.  That  would  be  conferring 
too  much  dignity  upon  an  undignified  criti- 
cism. I  desire  only  to  make  plain  the  fact 
that,  except  in  the  manner  of  stating  it,  there 
is  not  the  slightest  difference  between  my  gen- 
eral position  and  that  taken  by  Marx,  Engels, 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

Liebknecht,  Kautsky,  and  others  whose 
"  orthodoxy  "  is  unquestioned.  Marx  and 
Engels  made  it  perfectly  clear  in  the  Com- 
munist Manifesto,  more  than  sixty  years  ago, 
that  they  were  not  aiming  at  the  abolition  of 
private  property;  that  only  that  capitalistic 
form  of  property  which  was  used  to  exploit 
the  workers  was  attacked.  Liebknecht, 
Kautsky,  and  others,  have  laid  special  em- 
phasis upon  the  same  point.  Kautsky's  The 
Social  Revolution  and  Vandervelde's  Collec- 
tivism may  be  referred  to  for  proof  of  this. 
In  a  remarkable  manuscript,  referred  to  and 
quoted  from  in  the  following  pages,  Lieb- 
knecht not  only  laid  stress  upon  this  point,  but 
also  upon  the  fact  that  the  greatest  possible 
consideration  for  the  present  privileged 
classes  would  be  observed.  He  wrote : 

"  Even  those  who  now  enjoy  privileges 
and  monopolies  ought  to  be  made  to  under- 
stand that  we  do  not  propose  to  adopt  any 
violent  or  sudden  measures  against  those 
whose  position  is  now  sanctioned  by  law,  and 
that  we  are  resolved,  in  the  interests  of  a 

[12] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

peaceful  and  harmonious  evolution,  to  bring 
about  the  transition  from  legal  injustice  to 
legal  justice  with  the  greatest  possible  con- 
sideration for  the  individuals  who  are  now 
privileged  monopolists. 

"  We  recognize  that  it  would  be  unjust  to 
hold  those  who  have  built  up  a  privileged  sit- 
uation for  themselves  on  the  basis  of  bad 
legislation  personally  responsible  for  that 
bad  legislation,  and  to  punish  them  person- 
ally. 

"  We  especially  state  that  in  our  opinion  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  State  to  give  an  indemnity 
to  those  whose  interests  will  be  injured  by 
the  necessary  abolition  of  laws  contrary  to  the 
common  good  in  so  far  as  this  indemnity  is 
consistent  with  the  interests  of  the  nation  as 
a  whole." 

If  the  reader  will  procure  and  read  care- 
fully Liebknecht's  little  pamphlet,  Socialism: 
What  It  Is  and  What  It  Seeks  To  Accom- 
plish, he  will  see  that  Liebknecht  took  in  gen- 
eral a  position  identical  with  that  taken  by 
myself  in  the  following  pages.  My  own 

[13.1 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

Karl  Marx:  His  Life  and  Work  may  also  be 
referred  to. 

The  fact  is  that  for  many  years,  owing  to 
causes  into  which  it  is  not  possible  to  enter 
here,  a  gross  travesty  of  Marxian  Socialism 
has  been  commonly  put  forward  as  a  faithful 
account.  Now,  at  last,  American  Socialism 
is  beginning  to  develop  a  literature  of  its 
own,  and  to  throw  off  the  shackles  of  an  im- 
potent and  crude  "  Marxism  "  which  carica- 
tured every  essential  feature  of  Marx's  teach- 
ing. I  hope  that  I  may  be  pardoned  for  re- 
ferring to  Mr.  Morris  Hillquit's  admirable 
work,  Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice,  and 
my  own  Socialism  in  this  connection. 

It  is  my  earnest  hope  that  this  little  volume 
may  help  to  give  the  reader  a  clearer  and 
juster  view  of  the  great  Socialist  movement 
of  to-day  than  has  heretofore  generally  pre- 
vailed. 

J.S. 

Raymond  Cottage, 

Bennington  Centre,  Vt., 

Beginning  of  August,  1909. 

[14] 


I 

THE  SOCIALIST  HOPE 


IN  that  pathetic  nightmare  of  melodrama 
and  pessimism,  The  Iron  Heel,  Mr.  Jack 
London  observes  that  for  a  long  time  it 
has  been  sufficient  to  damn  any  propaganda 
or  movement  simply  to  call  it  "  Utopian." 
With  due  allowance  for  the  exaggeration  of 
the  statement,  it  must  be  admitted  that  it 
contains  important  elements  of  truth.  "  O, 
it  is  altogether  Utopian !  "  cries  the  hard- 
headed,  practical  man  of  affairs  when  he  is 
asked  to  consider  the  claims  of  Socialism,  and 
then  he  smiles  complacently,  satisfied  that  the 
last  word  of  wisdom  has  been  said.  To  con- 
sider it  any  further,  he  thinks,  would  be  a 
grievous  waste  of  precious  mental  energy,  and 
of  time  which  might  be  more  profitably  em- 
ployed in  the  market  place. 

Now,  what  is  there  in  that  word  "  Uto- 
pian "  which  makes  it  so  terrible  as  an  epi- 
[17] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

thet?  What  do  we  mean  when  we  denounce 
a  movement  or  a  propaganda  as  Utopian? 
Why,  simply  that  it  is  visionary  and  out  of 
reach;  that  howsoever  beautiful  its  aims  may 
be  they  are  beyond  our  present  powers  of  re- 
alization so  far  that  working  to  attain  them 
does  not  commend  itself  to  our  practical 
worldly  sense.  It  is  the  contemptuous  sneer 
of  the  hard-headed  practical  man  at  the 
"  dreamer  of  dreams." 

It  is  not  such  a  terrible  thing,  after  all! 
To  hitch  our  wagon  to  a  star,  as  Emerson  ad- 
vised us,  is  to  be  guilty  of  being  Utopians. 
For  if  our  star  is  really  a  star,  and  not  a  mere 
lantern  hung  out  to  deceive  us,  we  shall  never 
reach  it  with  our  wagon;  the  end  of  our 
journey  will  be  far  short  of  the  star.  If, 
knowing  this,  we  aim  at  the  stellar  goal  we 
may  not  reach,  we  are  Utopians  and  fit  sub- 
jects for  the  reproaches  of  our  more  practical 
fellows  who  hitch  their  wagons  to  the  near- 
est street  lamps  instead  of  to  stars.  So  there 
are  many  things  worse  than  being  a  Utopian 
[18] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

—  to  be  a  pulpit  perverter  of  the  Gospel,  for 
example,  or  even  a  legislator  with  one  hand 
constantly  employed  in  grasping  the  rewards 
for  faithful  service  to  Privilege.  One  would 
rather  be  known  as  a  dreamer  of  beatific 
dreams  than  as  the  alderman  who  sold  his 
vote  to  a  public  service  corporation  seeking  a 
franchise. 

There  is  some  significance  in  the  fact  that 
Jesus  was  a  dreamer,  a  Utopian  of  the  Uto- 
pians, while  Judas  was  a  very  "  practical  " 
man.  In  the  verdict  of  History  the  dreamer 
has  an  honored  place,  while  the  practical  man 
is  remembered  only  with  scorn.  The  figures 
that  loom  largest  in  history  are  the  dreamers 
who  were  sneered  at  as  Utopians  by  the  hard- 
headed  practical  men  of  their  time.  Take, 
for  example,  the  Bible  and  scan  the  roll  of 
its  great  characters.  Do  you  not  find  that 
the  names  that  shine  with  the  brightest  luster 
are  those  of  the  great  dreamers  and  Utopi- 
ans? The  practical  priests  inside  the  church 
have  for  the  most  part  been  mercifully  for- 
[19] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

gotten,  but  the  prophets  outside,  all  of  them 
dreamers  and  Utopians,  have  been  gloriously 
remembered,  their  names  being  blazoned  in 
imperishable  letters  upon  the  deathless  page. 
From  Moses  to  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel,  down  to 
Jesus  and  John,  all  the  prophets  were  dream- 
ers, mocked  by  the  practical  men  of  their 
day.  Isaiah  foretelling  the  coming  of  a  time 
when  they  who  plant  vineyards  shall  eat  the 
fruit  thereof,  and  Jesus  praying  "  Let  Thy 
kingdom  come ! "  were  Utopians  quite  as 
truly  as  Plato,  Sir  Thomas  More,  Saint  Si- 
mon or  Robert  Owen. 

Columbus  was  the  dreamer;  those  who 
mocked  him  were  the  practical  men  of  the 
time.  It  was  a  practical  man  who  thought 
to  silence  the  dreamer,  Robert  Stephenson, 
by  asking  him  what  would  happen  if  his 
"  steam  horse  "  should  meet  a  cow  upon  the 
tracks,  and  who  could  not  see  any  humor  in 
the  quaint  reply,  "  It  wad  be  verra  awkward 
for  th'  coo."  It  was  the  practical  man  who 
sneered  at  Morse's  dream  of  the  electric  tele- 

[20] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

graph  and  Marconi's  wonderful  vision-  of 
wireless  telegraphy.  To  be  counted  among 
the  dreamers  is  not,  after  all,  an  unenviable 
fate:  it  is  a  glorious  company,  this  host  of 
the  once  derided  dreamers,  now  honored  and 
sung! 

In  one  sense,  Socialism  is  a  dream  and  the 
millions  of  its  adherents  are  dreamers.  They 
look  forward  to  a  time  when  neither  the  black 
shadow  of  poverty  nor  the  scarlet  shadow  of 
war  shall  oppress  mankind.  They  wait  the 
day  when  no  child's  hunger-cry  shall  distress 
the  hearts  of  men  and  women,  the  fulfillment 
of  the  ages-old  dream  of  human  brotherhood. 
The  faith  of  the  Socialist  in  the  coming  of  a 
better  and  brighter  day  is  invincible.  If  that 
is  what  is  meant  when  it  is  said  that  Socialists 
are  Utopians,  a  plea  of  guilty  must  be  en- 
tered. Every  Socialist  worthy  the  name  is  a 
dreamer.  He  dreams  the  dream  of  Moses 
upon  Sinai,  of  Jesus  upon  the  Mount;  the 
dream  that  was  Lincoln's,  the  dream  by 
which  all  who  look  to  the  future  for  the 

[21] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

Golden  Age  are  inspired.  His  heart  holds 
dear  a  sublime  faith  in  the  coming  of  a  time 
when 

All  shall  be  better  than  well. 

But  the  Socialist  is  only  a  Utopian  in  that 
sense.  He  is  a  dreamer,  as  all  whose  eyes 
are  lifted  to  the  skies  are  dreamers.  But  he 
is  not  a  Utopian  in  the  sense  of  one  having 
devised  a  plan  for  the  reconstruction  of  so- 
ciety. Socialism  is  not  a  scheme,  a  detailed 
plan  for  the  regeneration  of  society  and  the 
removal  of  all  its  ills.  It  is  no  political  and 
economic  cure-all,  guaranteed  to  make  a  per- 
fect society.  The  modern  Socialist  does  not, 
and  cannot,  paint  for  you  a  picture  of  the 
future  society,  such  as  the  many  followers  of 
Plato  have  imagined.  It  is  useless,  there- 
fore, to  ask  him  for  specifications  and  plans 
of  the  Cooperative  Commonwealth  of  which 
he  so  eloquently  speaks.  None  but  a  vision- 
ary of  the  wildest  type  would  believe  it  pos- 
sible for  the  Socialist  to  do  so. 

Strangely  enough,  it  is  always  your  hard- 

[22] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

headed,  practical  man  who  regards  Socialism 
as  a  scheme  for  building  the  Perfect  State 
somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Delec- 
table Mountains,  and  who  is  disappointed 
when  he  finds  that  it  is  nothing  of  the  kind. 
He  comes  with  his  questions  concerning  the 
future,  and  wants  to  know  what  will  be  done 
to  insure  perfect  happiness.  He  asks  for 
specifications  of  the  future  social  state,  and 
for  a  guarantee  that  perfection  will  be  real- 
ized therein. 

The  Socialist,  of  course,  makes  the  com- 
monsense  answer  that  he  does  not  know  when 
he  is  thus  pressed  for  information  concerning 
details  of  the  society  of  the  future.  He  as- 
sures his  perplexed  questioner  that  he  does 
not  think  of  the  Cooperative  Commonwealth 
as  the  Perfect  State  in  which  perfect  happi- 
ness is  at  last  realized.  He  knows  that  the 
world  cannot  be  made  to  conform  to  the 
dream  of  the  Heart's  Desire.  He  indulges 
in  no  futile  and  vain  hope  that  mankind  can 
be  made  perfect  and  completely  happy  by 
any  ingenious  legislative  devices.  The  splen- 

[23] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

did  genius  of  Darwin,  which  was  the  crown- 
ing glory  of  the  nineteenth  century,  opened 
up  to  mankind  a  new  and  inspiring  view  of 
the  great  drama  of  human  progress.  We 
know  now  that  social  changes  are  not  made 
in  response  to  our  prayers;  we  know  that 
every  social  change  is  brought  about  by 
gigantic  evolutionary  forces  which  our  con- 
scious will  can  only  assist.  The  present  so- 
cial state  is  not  the  deliberate  realization  of 
some  great  inventor's  designs,  but  the  out- 
come of  centuries  of  evolution,  a  long  process 
of  development  in  which  steam  and  electricity 
and  human  aspiration  have  been  mighty 
forces. 

It  is  the  Socialist,  then,  who  most  clearly 
realizes  the  futility  of  social  schemes;  who  re- 
lies upon  evolution  for  his  hope,  and  knows 
that  the  future  is  being  developed  in  the 
womb  of  the  present.  He,  almost  alone  of 
men,  realizes  how  vain  is  that  wish  of  Omar 
the  Pagan,  which  so  many  people  entertain 
to-day,  to  shatter  "  this  sorry  scheme  of 
things  "  to  bits  and  then  to  "  remold  it  nearer 
[24] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

to  the  Heart's  Desire."  While  he  contem- 
plates with  reverent  admiration  the  faith  of 
a  Fourier,  waiting  patiently  at  noon  every  day 
for  twelve  years  for  the  philanthropist  with 
a  million  francs  to  secure  the  happiness  of  the 
world,  the  Socialist  sees  its  pathos,  not  in  the 
fact  that  the  philanthropist  Fourier  expected 
never  came,  but  in  the  futility  of  the  hope 
that  the  world's  happiness  could  be  secured  by 
any  such  method  if  he  came.  And  when  he 
thinks  of  the  saintly  Robert  Owen,  disap- 
pointed that  the  British  Parliament  put  off 
the  consideration  of  his  Utopia  for  a  session, 
crying  out,  "  What !  postpone  the  happiness 
of  the  whole  human  race  to  the  next  ses- 
sion?" the  Socialist  has  only  reverence  for 
the  great  dreamer's  faith  and  singleness  of 
purpose,  mingled  with  pity  for  his  blindness 
to  the  laws  of  human  progress. 

Most  persons  are  somewhat  startled  when 
they  hear  some  Socialist  agitator  say,  or  read 
in  a  Socialist  book  or  paper,  that  Socialism 
is  not  at  all  a  Utopian  scheme;  that  it  is  not 
a  design  for  the  destruction  of  all  the  insti- 
[25] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

tutions  so  painfully  evolved  through  the  un- 
counted years  of  human  struggle,  and  the 
building  of  a  new  social  edifice  upon  the 
ruins  of  the  old.  They  are  astonished  to 
learn  that  the  Socialist  does  not  delude  him- 
self into  the  belief  that,  as  a  result  of  the 
inspiration  of  an  Owen  or  a  Marx,  laws  will 
be  enacted  which  will  make  earth  a  Paradise, 
subdue  all  evil  human  passions,  and  make 
men  gods.  "  But  will  there  not  always  be 
some  to  fail  to  make  the  most  of  life  and 
waste  its  opportunities  ? "  asks  the  simple- 
minded  person  of  this  type.  "  Quite  prob- 
ably so,"  replies  the  mildly  amused  Socialist, 
"  but  pray  what  has  that  to  do  with  the  claim 
that  at  least  all  should  be  given  equal  op- 
portunities? " 

"  But  don't  you  think  that  some  men  and 
women  will  rise  above  the  rest,  in  any  sort 
of  social  state?"  asks  the  amiable  simple- 
minded  person  whose  concept  of  Socialism  is 
that  it  is  a  beautiful  scheme  for  abolishing 
evil  from  the  world,  to  be  astonished  by  the 
reply,  "  Certainly:  it  would  be  very  unfortu- 
[26] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

nate  if  it  were  otherwise.  But  pray  what  has 
that  to  do  with  the  matter?  Is  that  a  good 
reason  why  some  should  be  weighted  down 
with  leaden  disadvantages,  so  that  they  can- 
not rise?  " 

Socialism  is  an  expression  of  faith  in  man. 
It  is  a  theory  of  social  progress  according 
to  which  each  stage  in  the  social  ascent  from 
brute  to  brother  and  from  bondage  to  free- 
dom is  made  possible  only  through  the  ex- 
tension of  man's  kingdom  in  the  universe,  his 
mastery  over  the  forces  of  external  nature. 
The  social  state  which  it  hails  with  so  much 
rapturous  faith  is  only  a  new  stage  in  the 
upward  march  of  the  race,  a  new  epoch  of 
civilization,  made  possible  and  inevitable  by 
the  great  economic  forces  which  man  has  de- 
veloped, and  which  in  turn  compel  him  to 
march  on  to  still  loftier  heights. 

Such  being  the  case,  it  is  as  irrational  to 
demand  of  the  Socialist  answers  to  the  multi- 
tudinous questions  concerning  matters  of  de- 
tail which  are  so  easily  propounded  as  it 
would  have  been  to  propound  such  questions 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

to  a  fourteenth  century  man  concerning  the 
social  system  which  he  saw  developing  out 
of  feudalism.  One  has  only  need  to  imagine 
oneself  living  in  that  far-off  time  of  transi- 
tion, fully  conscious  of  the  impending  rise  of 
a  new  social  and  economic  order,  and  pro- 
claiming that  consciousness  fearlessly  and 
constantly  in  the  face  of  ridicule  and  sneer- 
ing skepticism,  to  realize  something  like  the 
position  of  the  modern  Socialist  heralding  the 
rise  of  a  new  social  order.  Imagine  the 
skeptics  of  that  period  of  transition  from 
feudalism  to  capitalism  taunting  the  man  who 
proclaimed  the  coming  of  a  new  order  out  of 
the  womb  of  the  old  because  he  could  not  tell 
exactly  how  all  the  details  of  the  new  so- 
ciety would  be  arranged!  At  most  the 
prophet  would  be  able  to  tell  only  the  great 
fundamental  economic  outlines,  more  or  less 
clearly  evident  to  the  discerning  eye:  to  de- 
mand more  would  be  the  most  foolish  of 
Utopian  follies. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  Socialist  of  to-day. 
He  believes  that  he  can   discern  the  main 
[28] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

outlines  of  the  economic  basis  of  a  new  so- 
cial order  growing  out  of  the  present.  That 
outline  he  is  prepared  to  trace  as  well  as  he 
is  able.  But  you  must  not  ask  him  to  tell 
you  what  women  will  wear  in  the  Coopera- 
tive Commonwealth,  how  it  will  be  decided 
who  shall  live  on  the  corner  lot,  nor  how  the 
government  will  prevent  the  accumulation  of 
antique  snuff  boxes  and  grandfather  clocks 
by  individuals  of  highly  developed  acquis- 
itiveness. If  he  were  a  Utopian  of  the  old 
school,  advocating  the  reconstruction  of  so- 
ciety according  to  some  carefully  wrought  de- 
sign, he  would  be  able  to  answer  all  such 
questions  with  precision.  But  he  is  just  an 
ordinary  mortal  like  yourself,  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  signs  of  social  growth. 


[29] 


II 


YOUR  hard-headed  man  of  "practical" 
sense  is  opposed  to  Socialism  because  he 
believes  that  it  is  contemplated  to  make 
all  people  equal.  A  multitude  of  advisers  as- 
sure him  that  this  is  so.  The  most  loqua- 
cious —  and  omniscient  —  President  the  na- 
tion ever  had  assured  him  that  Socialism 
meant  nothing  less  than  the  reduction  of  all 
human  beings  to  one  dead  level  of  mediocrity. 
But  the  Socialist  answers  that  Socialism  does 
not  concern  itself  with  equality  at  all.  He 
knows  very  well  that  there  can  never  be 
equality  of  gift,  of  character,  or  of  attain- 
ment. As  some  will  be  bigger  of  body  than 
their  fellows,  so  some  will  always  be  bigger 
of  mind  and  soul.  The  vision  of  a  world  of 
perfect  equality  is  like  the  quest  for  the  Phi- 
losopher's Stone  and  the  Elixir  of  Perpetual 
[30] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

Youth.  It  is,  fortunately,  an  illusive  and  un- 
attainable ideal. 

Nature's  law  is  inequality.  Mountain  and 
valley  and  plain  in  the  physical  world  have 
their  counterparts  in  human  nature.  No  So- 
cialist believes  that  the  diversities  of  human 
capacity  and  attainment  will  be  swept  away, 
that  there  will  ever  be  uniformity  of  intel- 
lectual or  spiritual  attainment.  When  the 
Socialist's  ideal  of  a  Cooperative  Common- 
wealth is  attained  there  will  still  be  moun- 
tains of  genius  rising  above  the  plain  of  life, 
mountains  of  higher  altitudes  and  more  nu- 
merous than  at  present.  It  is  to-day  that 
genius  is  repressed:  the  "  dull  level  of  life  '* 
is  a  present  reality. 

The  only  equality  which  Socialists  hope  to 
see  realized  in  the  world  is  that  divine  equal- 
ity which  cannot  be  denied  without  denying 
liberty  and  brotherhood  at  the  same  time  — 
equality  of  opportunity.  The  protest  of 
modern  Socialism  is  not  directed  against  Na- 
ture's inequalities,  which  give  us  the  "  hew- 
ers of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  "  upon  the 
[30 


The    Substance    of  Socialism. 

one  hand  and  the  genius  of  a  Shakespeare,  a 
Darwin,  or  an  Edison  upon  the  other.  It  is 
directed  solely  against  those  artificial,  man- 
made  inequalities  which  bind  chains  upon  the 
souls  of  men,  stifle  genius  in  the  hideous 
quagmire  of  poverty  and  despair,  and  exalt 
a  few  upon  thrones  of  privileges  —  thrones 
that  are  founded  upon  the  prostrate  and 
bound  forms  of  the  oppressed. 

While  it  is  true  that  not  all  the  flowers  in 
Life's  garden  will  be  alike,  equal  in  beauty 
of  color  or  fragrance,  it  is  not  the  less  true 
that  every  one  of  them  must  have  an  equal 
chance  to  blossom  and  grow  before  we  can 
speak  of  justice  as  an  accomplished  fact.  And 
the  world  will  not  be  a  fit  place  for  a  human 
child,  nor  worthy  of  man's  highestraspiration, 
until  every  human  blossom  has  equal  care 
and  opportunity  to  grow.  Not  until  the 
economic  conditions  of  life  make  it  possible 
for  every  child  born  into  the  world  to  attain 
the  fullest  possible  development  of  its  pow- 
ers will  it  be  right  for  us  to  rest  content  and 
satisfied. 

[32] 


The   Substance    o'f  Socialism 

Economic  conditions  are  far  more  impor- 
tant than  the  world's  moralists  have  recog- 
nized, for  they  are  the  soil  in  which  the  roots 
of  life  and  character  grow,  and  from  which 
they  draw  the  sustaining  forces  which  alone 
make  possible  free  blossoming  and  perfect 
fruitage.  Life  attains  a  generous  height  and 
a  perfect  texture  only  when  its  roots  are  nur- 
tured in  the  soil  of  nourishing  economic  con- 
ditions. What  we  want,  then,  in  the  interest 
of  society  as  well  as  that  of  the  individual, 
is  equal  economic  opportunities  for  all.  And 
until  that  end  has  been  attained,  so  long  as 
the  foul,  dank  tenement  casts  its  black 
shadow  over  our  cities,  and  the  pinched  and 
wan  faces  of  hungry  children  haunt  our 
streets,  the  song  of  brotherhood  will  be  un- 
sung, a  prophecy,  not  a  reality  of  life.  And 
so  long  will  our  streets  and  market  places 
abound  with  broken  and  depraved  human 
figures,  driftwood  and  waste  of  the  great  hu- 
man struggle,  doomed  figures,  disinherited 
of  man's  divine  estate.  This  claim  for  equal- 
ity of  opportunity  as  the  right  of  every  child 

[33] 


•7*  h  e   Substance    of  Socialism 

is  incontestable  and  unanswerable.  Upon  it 
alone  can  justice  rest  firm  and  unshaken; 
from  it  alone  can  true  freedom  spring.  It  is 
the  rationale  of  the  Socialism  that  is  challeng- 
ing the  age  in  which  we  live. 


[34] 


Ill 


SOCIALISM  is  most  grievously  misunder- 
stood and  misinterpreted  when  it  is  be- 
lieved to  be  opposed  to  private  property. 
Socialism  and  private  property  are  not  anti- 
thetical. The  common  ownership  of  every- 
thing, which  so  many  good  people  still  believe 
to  be  involved  in  the  Socialist  programme, 
has,  in  fact,  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Such 
communistic  ideas  belong  to  the  ancient  Uto- 
pias of  Plato,  of  the  early  Christian  Fathers, 
of  More  and  Fourier  and  Owen.  The  mod- 
ern Socialist  ideal  bears  very  slight  resemblance 
to  these  ancient  ideals  with  their  violent  ha- 
tred of  private  property.  The  American  So- 
cialist of  to-day  is  much  nearer  to  Aristotle's 
belief  in  the  maintenance  of  private  property, 
and  its  approximate  equalization,  than  to 
Plato's  belief  in  the  abolition  of  all  private 
property. 

In  a  certain  sense,  the  whole  history  of 

[35] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

human  civilization  may  be  said  to  be  the 
record  of  man's  struggle  with  this  question 
of  property,  his  attempt  rightly  to  relate  him- 
self to  things.  Every  great  epoch  in  history 
has  been  born  out  of  a  conflict  concerning 
property  rights.  The  modern  struggle  of 
woman  for  the  right  of  suffrage  is  but  the 
aftermath  of  her  emancipation  from  the  sta- 
tus of  a  chattel.  When  the  primitive  man 
went  out  to  hunt  a  wife,  he  went  armed,  but 
not  with  bon  bons,  opera  tickets  and  flowers, 
as  the  twentieth  century  man  goes.  Instead, 
he  armed  himself  with  a  big  stick  or  stone. 
Catching  the  lady  of  his  choice,  he  rendered 
her  unconscious,  dragged  her  to  his  home, 
and  she  became  his  property.  The  Council 
of  Bishops  at  Macon,  in  the  sixth  century, 
disputing  as  to  whether  woman  had  a  soul, 
and  the  legislators  in  twentieth  century 
America  disputing  her  right  to  the  franchise, 
remind  us  of  the  old  notion  that  woman  was 
properly  a  chattel. 

When  the  State  decreed  that  human  beings 
of  a  certain  race  were  properly  to  be  regarded 
[36] 


The   Substance    o'f  Socialism 

as  chattels,  and  property  in  human  bodies  and 
souls  was  legalized  by  the  statutes,  the  first 
challenge  to  that  idea  came  with  a  shock  to 
the  great  mass  of  the  people.  Boston 
mobbed  her  brave  Garrison,  and  Concord 
stoned  the  gentle  Whittier.  Why?  Be- 
cause it  was  charged  that  the  Abolitionists 
were  seeking  to  destroy  private  property. 
Had  they  been  charged  with  attempting  to 
destroy  religion,  morality,  art,  or  anything 
else  they  would  not  have  experienced  such 
violence,  but  an  attack  upon  private  property 
inevitably  brought  down  upon  their  heads 
the  wrath  of  an  enraged  property-holding 
and  property-worshiping  class.  When  they 
were  accused  of  the  monstrous  crime  of  seek- 
ing to  destroy  private  property,  the  enemies 
of  the  iniquitous  system  of  chattel  slavery 
made  the  reply  which  the  Socialists  are 
repeating  to-day.  "  We  are  not  opposed 
to  private  property,  but  only  to  certain  hid- 
eous forms  of  it."  Their  declaration,  which 
the  immortal  Lincoln  so  superbly  voiced,  was 
that  they  had  no  sort  of  objection  to  the 

[37] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

ownership  of  things,  but  that  they  would  not 
rest  until  they  had  destroyed  the  ownership 
of  men  and  women. 

In  the  fierce  heat  of  war,  at  a  price  which 
still  saddens  and  staggers  the  mind,  the  na- 
tion established  the  principle  that  no  man 
was  good  enough  or  great  enough  to  be  the 
master  of  another's  life.  To-day  the  na- 
tion is  being  called  upon  by  the  Socialist  to 
face  a  new  challenge,  which  must  be  met  and 
answered  by  the  heart  and  brain  of  the 
American  people.  The  Socialist  believes 
that  he  is  carrying  the  banner  which  Lincoln 
bore,  taking  it  from  where  the  cold  hand  of 
Lincoln  laid  it  down  and  bearing  it  to  where 
he  would  bear  it  were  he  alive  to-day.  So- 
cialism carries  the  eternal  issue  onward.  As 
Lincoln  thundered  that  no  man  was  good 
enough  to  own  another's  life,  so  the  Socialist 
agitator  of  our  time  is  thundering  the  new 
form  of  the  old  principle,  saying  that  no  man 
is  good  enough  to  own  the  things  upon  which 
another's  life  depends.  To  declare  men 

[38] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

free,  to  burn  the  parchments  which  declare 
them  to  be  bound  and  chattels,  is  not  really 
to  set  them  free.  No  man  is  really  free 
whose  life  is  controlled  by  another,  who  de- 
pends upon  some  other  man  for  the  right  to 
earn  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow. 

This,  then,  is  the  challenge  of  Socialism: 
No  man  is  good  enough  to  be  master  of  an- 
other man's  bread,  of  another  man's  job,  of 
another  man's  life.  The  three  things  mean 
the  same  in  the  last  analysis,  for  whoever  is 
master  of  a  man's  bread,  of  his  opportunities 
to  labor,  is  master  of  his  life  as  surely  as  if 
he  owned  a  parchment  testifying  to  the  fact 
that  he  bought  the  man  at  auction.  The 
breadmakers  of  the  world  must  be  empowered 
to  eat  the  bread  their  hands  make;  the  means 
of  making  bread  must  be  taken  from  the 
hands  of  those  who  through  them  hold  their 
fellows  in  bondage,  and  made  common  and 
free  to  all. 

So  modern  Socialism  denies  no  property 
right  other  than  that  which  gives  man  do- 
[39] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

minion  over  his  fellows.  The  farmer  work- 
ing his  farm  and  maintaining  himself  and  his 
family  in  comfort  does  not  by  that  labor 
bind  chains  upon  his  fellow  men  and  upon  the 
children  that  are  unborn.  Not  private  prop- 
erty, but  those  anti-social  forms  of  it  which 
have  been  developed,  and  which  give  a  ruling 
economic  class  the  power  to  exploit  the  labor 
and  needs  of  the  toiling  masses  Socialism  op- 
poses and  seeks  to  bring  under  democratic 
social  control. 

Whoever  otherwise  represents  the  Social- 
ist programme  misrepresents  it.  To  claim, 
as  some  do,  that  this  is  an  emasculated  state- 
ment of  the  Socialist  aim,  for  the  purposes 
of  a  deceptive  propaganda,  is  disingenuous 
and  untrue.  Marx  and  Engels,  the  great 
founders  of  modern  scientific  Socialism,  took 
precisely  the  same  ground  in  their  famous 
Communist  Manifesto,  more  than  sixty  years 
ago,  as  reference  to  that  great  document  will 
show.  They  made  it  perfectly  clear  that 
they  opposed  only  that  capitalistic  form  of 
private  property  which  made  it  possible  for 
[40] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

a  class  of  property  owners  to  exploit  the 
wealth  producers;  that  private  property  of  a 
few  which  makes  private  property  for  the 
many  impossible. 


[41] 


IV 


THAT  is  why  the  struggle  is  one  of 
classes,  and  why  we  hear  so  much  in 
connection  with  the  Socialist  propa- 
ganda of  the  "  class  struggle  "  and  of  "  class 
consciousness."  When  Mr.  Roosevelt  was 
President,  like  a  habitual  scold,  he  hurled  his 
wrathful  bolts  at  the  Socialists  for  preaching 
this  doctrine  of  class  consciousness.  He 
seemed  to  think  that  the  Socialists  make  the 
class  struggle  of  which  they  talk  so  much, 
and,  like  a  great  many  other  people,  to  imag- 
ine that  the  wicked  Socialists  exist  by  provok- 
ing class  hatred. 

But  the  struggle  of  the  classes  about  which 
the  Socialist  has  so  much  to  say  is  not  pro- 
duced by  agitation.  It  is  not  in  response  to 
the  stirring  appeals  of  agitators  that  classes 
are  formed  in  a  nation  and  come  into  conflict. 
The  development  of  our  economic  system  to 
[42] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

a  point  where  the  control  of  practically  all 
the  resources  of  the  nation  resides  in  a  few 
hands,  forcing  these,  whether  they  desire  it 
or  not,  to  dominate  our  politics,  creates  an 
oligarchy  and  divides  the  nation  into  warring 
classes.  When  the  wealth  and  resources  of 
a  nation  become  the  property  of  a  minority, 
that  minority  inevitably  becomes  the  ruling 
class,  and,  inevitably  also,  the  subject  class 
will  find  itself  compelled  to  antagonize  it. 

The  class  struggle  is  therefore  not  an  ar- 
tificial revolt  that  is  created  and  fostered  by 
agitation,  but  a  natural  and  necessary  out- 
come of  our  economic  development.  Just  as 
we  may  say  that  all  history  is  the  record  of 
man's  struggles  to  place  property  in  its  right 
relation  to  life,  so  we  may  say  that  it  is  the 
record  of  class  struggles.  Progress  has  al- 
ways taken  the  form  of  class  struggles;  each 
epoch  in  civilization  has  been  ushered  in  by 
the  triumph  of  a  new  class  over  an  old  one. 
Frankly,  the  Socialist  movement  is  and  must 
be  a  class  movement.  That  is  to  say,  its  im- 
mediate object  must  be  to  secure  the  triumph 

[43] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

of  the  wage-working  class  over  the  class  of 
exploiters.  In  no  other  way  can  the  present 
system  with  its  exploitation  of  the  worker  by 
the  capitalist,  and  its  riot  of  wealth  won  only 
by  plunging  multitudes  into  the  abysses  of 
poverty,  ever  be  brought  to  an  end. 

This  does  not  mean,  however,  that  only 
the  manual  workers  are  wronged,  and  that 
they  alone  are  interested  in  bringing  about 
better  conditions.  Still  less  does  it  mean 
that  none  but  the  exploited  may  join  in  the 
political  Socialist  movement.  What  is  meant 
is  simply  this:  There  can  be  no  solution  of 
the  great  social  problem  which  does  not  de- 
stroy the  power  of  the  exploiting  class  and 
liberate  the  exploited  class.  To  that  purpose 
all  who  would  joins  hands  with  the  Socialists 
must  pledge  themselves,  and  it  is  natural  that 
the  workers  should  have  a  keener  interest  in 
the  fulfillment  of  this  purpose  than  their  ex- 
ploiters. 

Although  they  are  often  represented  as  de- 
siring simply  to  change  one  ruling  class  for 
another,  the  Socialists  are  clear-sighted 
[44] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

enough  to  see  that,  in  the  long  run,  not  much 
would  be  gained  by  that.  If  it  were  the  aim 
of  this  great  world  movement  of  labor  simply 
to  change  the  respective  places  of  the  warring 
classes,  the  masters  of  to-day  becoming  the 
slaves  of  to-morrow,  not  much  would  be  ac- 
complished. Society  would  still  be  divided 
into  warring  classes ;  there  would  still  be  lords 
of  bread  and  slaves  of  bread,  exploiters  and 
exploited.  No.  The  aim  of  this  world- 
circling  Socialist  movement  is  to  do  away  with 
class  rule  altogether,  not  merely  to  change 
masters.  The  workers  are  in  this  position: 
they  cannot  overthrow  the  rule  of  the  ex- 
ploiting class  without  destroying  the  only 
basis  upon  which  class  rule  can  rest,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  creating  the  only  possible  eco- 
nomic basis  for  the  life  of  brotherhood. 
Class  struggles  first  began  when  private  prop- 
erty in  the  means  of  the  social  life  appeared, 
and  one  man  could  say  of  the  conditions  es- 
sential to  another's  life,  "  These  are  subject 
to  my  will  and  law."  Class  struggles  will 
end  forever  when  the  means  of  the  common 
[45] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

life  are  made  subject  to  the  common  good 
and  will;  social  property,  owned  and  man- 
aged for  the  common  weal  and  joy.  The 
Socialist  movement  does  not  exist  for  the  pur- 
pose of  fostering  class  hatred :  it  is  aiming  to 
destroy  the  conditions  which  give  rise  to 
classes  and  produce  class  antagonisms  and 
hatreds.  This  pacific  purpose  is  very  differ- 
ent from  that  commonly  ascribed  to  the  So- 
cialists by  their  critics. 


[46] 


BUT,  it  may  be  argued,  all  the  Socialist 
theories  seem  plausible  enough  when 
they  are  carefully  and  calmly  stated,  but 
there  is  one  thing  which  the  Socialists  do  not 
take  into  account  —  they  overlook  human  na- 
ture 1  Selfishness  and  envy  are  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  man,  we  are  told,  and  it  is  feared 
that  the  Socialist  thinks  of  human  nature  as 
being  pure  gold  without  any  alloy.  This  is 
an  old  and  hoary  objection  which  every  So- 
cialist has  to  encounter. 

The  Socialist  replies  to  this  objection  by  in- 
sisting that  in  truth  it  is  the  opponents  of  So- 
cialism who  fail  to  reckon  properly  with  hu- 
man nature,  that  the  Socialist  alone  bases  all 
his  hope  and  his  efforts  upon  what  is  known 
of  human  nature.  That,  broadly  and  briefly 
stated,  is  the  claim  which  must  be  made  here 
on  behalf  of  the  Socialist  movement.  The 
[47] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

very  terms  in  which  the  average  man  speaks 
of  human  nature  betray  the  fact  that  he  has 
never  seriously  thought  about  it ;  never  asked 
himself  what  human  nature  is.  He  repeats, 
parrot-like,  an  objection  which  he  has  heard 
somewhere,  with  as  little  thought  as  a  parrot 
gives  to  the  things  it  has  been  taught  to  say, 
and  with  as  little  comprehension. 

What  is  meant  by  "  human  nature  "  when 
it  is  described  as  being  an  insuperable  ob- 
stacle to  Socialism?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that 
those  who  urge  this  objection  think  of  hu- 
man nature  as  something  fixed  and  unchang- 
ing, some  stable  ingredient,  some  inflexible 
principle,  which  enters  into  the  composition 
of  every  normal  human  being?  It  is  very 
evident  from  the  manner  in  which  the  objec- 
tion is  urged  that  most  of  those  who  urge  it 
have  in  their  minds,  perhaps  not  clearly  or 
definitely  formulated  as  yet,  a  conception  of 
human  nature  as  being  a  sort  of  parcel  of 
various  assorted  qualities,  a  composite  of  cer- 
tain vices  and  virtues,  more  or  less  evenly 
blended,  which  enters  into  the  mental  and 
[48] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

moral  make-up  of  the  average  human  being. 

But  in  truth  human  nature  is  always  chang- 
ing. Progress  implies  some  change  or  modi- 
fication of  human  nature.  Not  only  is  there 
not  at  any  time  a  common  standard  of  intel- 
lectual or  moral  development  which  justifies 
us  in  talking  of  human  nature  in  general,  but 
changes  of  time  and  place  involve  such 
changes  of  conduct  and  of  mental  attitude 
that  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  ought  to  be 
enough  to  dispose  of  this  stupid  old  objec- 
tion. 

Every  great  calamity  reported  in  the 
press  provides  its  own  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  there  is  no  very  definite  meaning  to  be 
attached  to  the  term  "  human  nature  "  which 
we  so  freely  use.  A  great  disaster  occurs  at 
sea,  for  example,  and  there  is  a  panic-stricken 
rush  for  the  boats.  Some  men  in  their  frenzy 
trample  down  women  and  children:  they  are 
mastered  by  the  primitive  instinct  of  self- 
preservation.  That  is  human  nature.  But 
some  other  men  hold  them  back  and  protect 
the  women,  helping  these  first  into  the  boats. 
[49] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

They  are  mastered  by  a  force  that  conquers 
the  primitive  human  instinct,  a  sentiment,  a 
convention  of  society,  a  tradition  of  the  race. 
That,  too,  is  human  nature. 

The  primitive  savage  afraid  of  fire,  and 
the  civilized  man  using  it,  both  illustrate  hu- 
man nature  in  different  stages  of  its  develop- 
ment. The  modern  man,  using  the  ocean  to 
bear  his  burdens  and  making  a  pathway  of 
the  skies,  and  his  remote  ancestor,  afraid  of 
the  ocean  and  regarding  the  sky  'as  an  awful 
mystery,  illustrate  human  nature  in  different 
stages  of  its  evolution;  their  conduct  reflects 
the  sum  of  their  knowledge  and  experience. 
Human  nature  is  exemplified  by  the  blind, 
helpless  terror  of  the  savage  in  Africa  in  the 
presence  of  the  dread  sleeping  sickness,  but 
another  phase  of  human  nature  is  exemplified 
by  the  great  scientist,  Koch,  going  into  the 
centers  of  pestilence  and  death  and  proving 
himself  more  powerful  than  the  natives' 
gods.  The  terrified  savage,  mutilating  his 
poor  body  in  the  hope  that  he  may  appease 
his  angry  gods,  and  the  scientist,  seeking  the 
£50] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

germ  of  the  disease,  draining  swamps  and 
patiently  developing  a  remedy  for  it,  illus- 
trate human  nature  as  a  great  and  constantly 
changing  expression  of  human  consciousness. 

Of  course,  there  is  a  law  of  life  and  de- 
velopment which  expresses  itself  in  what  is  so 
vaguely  termed  human  nature.  Man  is  a 
creature  of  his  environment,  and  self-preser- 
vation, self-realization,  self-expression,  are 
fundamental  instincts  which  determine  his 
conduct,  his  actions  in  any  given  environment. 
Socialism  is  not  an  artificial  attempt  to  sub- 
stitute some  other  law  for  this.  It  is  not  an 
attempt,  as  so  many  suppose,  to  substitute  al- 
truistic motives  for  those  of  self-interest  which 
spring  from  the  fundamental  law  of  life. 
Quite  the  contrary  is  true,  in  fact.  The 
whole  theory  of  modern  Socialism,  and  its 
appeal  to  the  workers,  rest  upon  the  law  of 
self-preservation.  Self-abnegation  is  not  So- 
cialism :  rather  it  should  be  defined  as  en- 
lightened self-interest. 

That  this  is  so  can  easily  be  shown.  Here 
are  two  classes  in  modern  society  opposed 

[51] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

to  each  other.  One  class  is  small,  but  ex- 
ceedingly powerful.  Despite  its  disadvan- 
tage in  size,  it  is  the  ruling  class,  controlling 
and  exploiting  the  larger  class.  Its  members 
rule  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  they  have  de- 
veloped a  sense  of  class  solidarity  as  a  result 
of  their  ownership  of  the  means  of  life. 
Now,  the  workers  are  developing  a  class  in- 
stinct, a  sense  of  class  solidarity,  as  a  neces- 
sary result  of  their  economic  experience  and 
position.  There  is  no  escaping  the  fact: 
The  deepest  and  profoundest  instinct  in  hu- 
man beings  is  that  they  are  forever  striving 
to  secure  more  of  good  in  return  for  less  of 
ill.  That  instinct  made  man  kindle  his  first 
fire;  it  inspired  the  building  of  the  first  ca- 
noe; it  has  inspired  every  invention  and  every 
revolution  in  the  world's  history.  Socialism 
rests  all  its  faith  upon  that  deep,  primal  hu- 
man instinct.  Instead  of  saying  that  Social- 
ism requires  a  change  in  human  nature  it 
would  be  fair  to  say  that  human  nature  makes 
inevitable  the  change  for  which  the  Social- 
ists are  working. 

[52] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

If  the  meaning  of  this  is  not  quite  clear, 
consider  the  matter  further  in  these  terms: 
Demos,  the  people,  long  ago  described  by 
Tomasso  Campanella  as  "  a  beast  of  muddy 
brain,"  is  developing  a  clear  mental  vision. 
No  longer  muddy-brained,  but  keen  and  alert, 
Demos  is  learning  that  poverty  is  unneces- 
sary, that  there  is  plenty  for  all,  and  that 
none  need  suffer  want;  that  it  is  possible  to 
suffer  less  and  live  more,  to  have  more  of 
good  while  enduring  less  of  ill.  That  De- 
mos should  reach  out  to  that  larger  life  with 
eager  grasp,  and  turn  toward  the  future  — 
the  future  of  Socialism  —  is  not  a  strange 
thing.  It  is  nothing  less  than  obedience  to 
Nature's  primal  law,  the  law  that  has  gov- 
erned the  world  since  the  first  man  gazed 
with  wonder  at  the  stars  above  him. 

No  attempt  to  make  a  plain,  commonsense 
statement  of  the  principles  of  the  Socialism 
of  to-day,  and  the  hope  which  inspires  its  ad- 
herents, can  satisfy  if  it  ignores  the  matter  of 
their  relation  to  the  institution  of  the  family 
based  upon  monogamic  marriage.  Among 
[53] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

all  the  heritages  of  Socialism  from  the  Uto- 
pian experiments  of  the  past  none  has  been 
the  source  of  greater  trouble  than  the  idea 
that  marriage  and  the  family  must  be  done 
away  with.  Plato's  Republic  made  the  com- 
munism of  property  complete  by  the  commu- 
nism of  women,  and  just  as  there  are  many 
people  who  think  that  the  Socialists  hold 
Plato's  communistic  ideal  regarding  proper- 
ty, so,  too,  they  think  the  Socialists  must  hold 
the  ideal  of  communism  of  wives. 

Let  it  be  said,  then,  with  all  possible  em- 
phasis, that  modern  Socialism  has  nothing 
in  common  with  those  schemes  for  placing 
family  life  upon  a  new  basis  which  are  gen- 
erally grouped  under  the  euphonious  designa- 
tion, "  Free  Love."  A  few  closet  philoso- 
phers, both  within  and  without  the  Socialist 
movement,  may  indulge  in  such  fantastic 
dreams,  but  the  great  mass  of  the  Socialists 
of  the  world  are  no  more  concerned  with 
them  than  the  great  mass  of  people  outside 
the  Socialist  ranks.  Whoever  charges  the 
Socialists  of  America  with  harboring  designs 
[54] 


The    Substance    of   Socialism 

for  the  destruction  of  the  family  based  upon 
monogamic  marriage,  branding  them  as 
"  Free  Lovers,"  deserves  to  be  ostracized  by 
all  right-thinking  men  and  women  who  love 
and  cherish  the  Republic,  quite  regardless  of 
party,  for  such  persons  endanger  the  safety 
and  stability  of  the  nation  itself  by  appealing 
to  prejudice  and  base  passion  in  the  discus- 
sion of  a  great  national  issue.  There  is  no 
worse  treason  than  that,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when,  whoso- 
ever makes  that  charge,  be  his  station  high 
or  low,  will  be  denounced  by  all  thoughtful 
citizens  as  an  enemy  of  the  Republic  more 
to  be  feared  than  a  host  of  Benedict  Arnolds. 
It  is  true  that  almost  all  the  Utopia  build- 
ers, from  Plato  to  the  entertaining  and  in- 
genious Mr.  Wells,  have  felt  it  incumbent 
upon  themselves  to  design  new  forms  for  the 
family  relation.  Some,  like  Plato,  have  in- 
sisted that  monogamous  marriage  must  be  de- 
stroyed and  communism  of  wives  established. 
Others,  like  Mr.  Wells,  have  insisted  upon 
retaining  monogamous  marriage  and  supple- 

[55] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

menting  it  with  some  system  of  state  super- 
vision, applying  the  principles  of  the  stud 
farm  to  the  propagation  of  the  race.  These 
visionaries  with  their  systems  of  eugenics  and 
stirpiculture,  and  their  dreams  of  the  Super- 
man, are  found  both  within  and  without  the' 
Socialist  movement.  But  if  you  would  take 
the  common  sense  view  of  the  matter  you 
must  recognize  that  the  Socialist  movement, 
as  such,  is  no  more  responsible  for  these  in- 
dividual views  and  fads  than  for  the  fact 
that  some  of  its  members  are  vegetarians, 
anti-vaccinationists,  anti-vivisectionists,  or  de- 
votees of  any  of  the  multitude  of  reform 
cults  to  which  men  and  women  attach  im- 
portance. You  must  judge  the  Socialist 
movement,  like  any  other,  by  its  mass ;  by  the 
common  aims  which  inspire  the  movement  as 
a  whole,  not  by  individual  caprices  or  idio- 
syncracies  which  manifest  themselves  among 
(  Socialists  as  among  all  masses  of  people. 

The  idea  that  Socialism  must  of  necessity 
involve  some  artificial  change  of  the  institu- 
tion of  the  family  was  born  of  man's  miscon- 
[56] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

ception  of  the  laws  of  population.  The  grim 
specter  of  over-population  with  which  Mal- 
thus  frightened  the  first  half  of  the  last  cen- 
tury has  never  wholly  disappeared  from  the 
mental  horizon.  Men  took  the  fears  of 
Malthus  and  made  of  them  a  dogma.  "  If 
you  make  life  too  easy,"  it  was  argued,  "  re- 
moving famine  and  pestilence,  and  the  fear 
of  famine  in  particular,  then  there  will  result 
an  unrestricted  propagation  of  the  race ;  pop- 
ulation will  overrun  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence." With  this  dogma  as  the  founda- 
tion of  their  thought,  they  naturally  con- 
cluded that  a  necessary  condition  of  Social- 
ism must  be  the  control  of  the  propagation 
of  the  species  by  the  State,  in  some  form  or 
another. 

But  we  know  now  that  the  old  dogma  was 
false.  We  know  that  the  true  law  of  popu- 
lation, among  human  beings  at  least,  is  not 
what  Malthus  thought,  but  that  population 
tends  to  abnormal  and  unsafe  increase  where 
there  is  most  poverty  and  hardship,  where  the 
struggle  for  existence  is  fiercest.  There  is 
[57] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

never  any  fear  of  "  race  suicide "  in  the 
slums,  as  we  know.  The  parents  who  are 
ill-nourished  and  hunger-menaced  and  over- 
worked breed  most  rapidly.  Adam  Smith 
pointed  out  that  in  his  Wealth  of  Nations 
more  than  a  century  ago,  but  we  are  only  now 
coming  to  a  full  realization  of  its  wonderful 
truth.  Nature  is  forever  struggling  against 
extinction,  and  where  life  is  hardest  her  most 
titanic  energies  are  put  forth.  That  is  the 
explanation  of  the  abnormal  fecundity  of  con- 
sumptives with  which  scientists  have  so  long 
been  familiar.  It  is  among  the  well-to-do 
classes  that  the  decline  of  the  birth-rate  is 
most  marked,  not  among  the  poor;  "  race  sui- 
cide "  is  a  problem,  not  in  the  poorest  coun- 
tries, but  in  the  most  prosperous. 

But  the  great  problem,  after  all,  is  not 
the  Rooseveltian  problem  of  race  suicide. 
Rather,  it  is  a  problem  of  race  homicide. 
What  ought  most  to  alarm  us  is  not  a  low 
birth-rate,  but  a  high  death-rate.  Our  ideal 
ought  not  to  be  a  tragic  race  between  the 
birth-rate  and  the  death-rate,  motherhood 
[58] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

given  over  to  the  twin  agonies  of  bearing 
and  burying  babies.  Given  fair  economic 
conditions,  there  need  be  no  fear,  either  that 
Nature  will  fail  to  maintain  the  existence  of 
the  race  or  that  population  will  over-run  the 
means  of  subsistence.  It  is  beyond  conjec- 
ture that  in  a  single  state,  say  Texas,  we  could 
grow  food  enough  to  feed  many  millions  of 
people  more  than  now  inhabit  the  whole  of 
the  United  States :  the  fear  of  population  out- 
running the  means  of  subsistence  is  as  remote 
as  the  fear  that  we  shall  be  crowded  out  by 
the  multiplication  of  humming  birds.  We 
need  but  divert  a  thousandth  part  of  the  land 
and  labor-power  now  employed  in  producing 
the  means  of  destruction  to  the  task  of  pro- 
ducing the  means  of  life  in  order  to  make 
the  whole  world  glad  with  fatness  and  plenty. 
It  requires  only  a  very  brief  and  rapid  sur- 
vey of  the  question  from  this  point  of  view 
to  show  the  futility  of  all  the  schemes,  an- 
cient and  modern,  for  suppressing  marriage 
and  the  family  as  a  condition  of  social  well- 
being.  All  the  so-called  "  Free  Love " 
[59] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

schemes  that  have  been  devised  with  that  end 
in  view  have  their  raison  d'  etre  in  a  false 
concept  of  the  laws  of  population. 

Socialism,  then,  involves  neither  u  Free 
Love  "  nor  the  application  of  the  principles 
of  the  stud  farm  to  the  family.  So  much 
may  be  asserted  without  expressing  any  con- 
demnation of  any  of  the  systems  of  eugenics 
and  stirpiculture  that  have  been  propounded: 
these  can  be  considered  upon  their  merits,  all 
that  concerns  us  here  and  now  being  the  fact 
that  they  are  not  involved  in  the  Socialist 
programme. 

Yet  it  would  not  be  wholly  true  to  say  that 
Socialism  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  family, 
for  indeed  it  is  to  be  devoutly  hoped  that  it 
will  greatly  influence  family  life  for  good, 
exalting  it  to  a  higher  plane  than  it  has  ever 
reached  hitherto.  It  is  not  vain  to  hope  that 
a  satisfactory  readjustment  of  our  economic 
conditions  will  result  in  the  repression  of 
those  evils  which  most  menace  family  life  to- 
day. It  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose,  as 
all  Socialists  do,  that  given  equality  of  eco- 
[60] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

nomic  opportunity  to  all  with  privilege  to 
none,  which  is  the  whole  aim  of  Socialism, 
no  woman  would  bind  herself  to  loveless  wed- 
lock merely  for  the  sake  of  a  "  home,"  as  in 
our  hearts  we  know  millions  of  women  must 
do  to-day.  Nor  would  women  sell  them- 
selves body  and  soul  for  coronets  and  titles, 
for  wealth  and  social  position  —  a  form  of 
prostitution  under  the  cloak  of  marriage  com- 
mon enough  to-day  —  prostitution  which  no 
altar  can  sanctify,  infinitely  more  serious  and 
shameful  than  the  prostitution  which  flaunts 
its  painted  forms  upon  our  pavements,  or 
lurks  within  the  shadows  of  brothels. 


[61] 


VII 

IN  this  brief  summary  of  the  hope  of  most 
present  day  Socialists  we  have  kept  very 
close  to  the  material  things  of  practical  life 
which  peculiarly  belong  to  the  rule  of  that 
practical  judgment  based  upon  conscious  ex- 
perience which  men  call  "  common  sense."  It 
would  not,  however,  be  fair  or  just  to  con- 
clude without  some  reference,  however  brief, 
to  that  vision  of  Socialism  which  is  so  dear  to 
many  thousands  of  Socialists  in  all  lands, 
which  cannot  be  confined  within  the  metes 
and  bounds  of  these  material  things.  Be- 
yond these  things,  beyond  the  mere  physical 
life,  deeper  in  its  roots  and  higher  in  its  reach, 
is  that  life  of  the  spirit  which  we  vaguely 
sense,  but  feel  to  be  the  noblest  end  of  man's 
being.  Though  we  have  ceased  to  regard 
the  story  of  God  making  a  form  of  clay  and 
then  breathing  into  its  nostrils  the  Breath  of 
[62] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

Life  and  calling  it  a  "  Living  Soul "  as  a 
literal  fact,  it  has  not  ceased  to  have  its  value 
for  us.  We  can  still  regard  it  as  a  splendid 
symbol,  for  there  is  in  each  human  being  that 
which  transcends  the  physical  life,  a  life  of 
the  spirit. 

So,  to  many  thousands  of  earnest  Socialists 
in  all  lands,  Socialism  means  something  more 
than  an  economic  readjustment;  something 
that  is  infinitely  vaster  and  more  glorious 
than  mere  material  gain.  The  economic 
programme  of  the  Socialist  movement,  mak- 
ing the  despoiled  and  disinherited  of  earth 
masters  of  the  State,  and  bringing  under  com- 
mon control  all  the  means  of  the  common  life, 
is  not  to  be  taken  as  the  end,  the  final  goal, 
of  the  Socialist  movement.  It  is  at  best  but 
a  means  to  an  end:  we  seek  the  liberation 
of  man's  physical  life,  not  as  those  who  go 
forth  to  harvest,  but  as  those  who  go  forth  to 
prepare  the  soil.  We  want  economic  free- 
dom as  the  only  means  whereby  spiritual 
freedom  can  be  secured.  We  want  to  open 
the  prison  gates  of  poverty  and  oppression 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

that  the  soul  of  man  may  be  set  free.  When 
we  beckon  our  fellows  to  join  us  in  our  efforts 
to  establish  economic  justice  and  security  it  is 
with  full  faith  that  only  in  the  land  of  eco- 
nomic freedom  will  the  Temple  of  Human 
Brotherhood  ever  be  found,  and  the  song  of 
Fellowship  be  heard. 


II 


PRIVATE  PROPERTY  AND  PER- 
SONAL LIBERTY  IN  THE 
SOCIALIST  STATE 


THE  most  persistent  and  wide-spread  an- 
tagonism    toward     Socialism     springs 
from  a  belief  that,  under  a  Socialist 
regime,    private    property    in    all    its    forms 
would  be  destroyed  and  personal  liberty  made 
impossible  by  the  rule  of  an  immense  bureau- 
cratic government.     All  other  objections,  it 
may  be  said  without  denying  their  force,  are 
subordinate  to  these  two. 

The  modern  Socialist,  whether  dogmatic 
Marxist  or  neo-Marxist,  indignantly  denies 
both  charges  contained  in  this  criticism.  The 
greater  its  persistence,  the  greater  his  vehe- 
mence. Not  unreasonably,  he-  claims  the 
right  to  define  the  Socialist  ideal  in  which  he 
believes  and  to  interpret  it  in  his  own  way: 
he  refuses  to  accept  the  dicta  of  the  enemies 
of  Socialism  as  to  its  meaning.  But,  in  spite 
of  indignant  denials,  the  criticism  prevails. 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

For  the  almost  universal  prevalence  of  this 
criticism  there  must  be  some  other  reason 
than  malice  on  the  part  of  the  critics.  Un- 
derlying the  seeming  malevolence  there  is 
always  a  very  real  belief  in  the  disaster  to 
the  institutions  of  private  property  and  per- 
sonal liberty  which  must  attend  the  triumph 
of  Socialism.  Instead  of  hatred  creating  the 
belief  that  a  Socialist  regime  is  incompatible 
with  personal  freedom  and  with  private  prop- 
erty, the  belief,  deep-seated  and  sincere,  how- 
ever mistaken  it  may  prove  to  be,  creates  the 
hatred.  It  must  be  remembered,  also,  that 
the  belief  is  not  confined  to  the  malevolent 
opponents  of  Socialism  and  Socialist  aims. 
Many  who  are  very  sympathetic  toward  the 
movement  and  the  ideal,  a  great  army  of  the 
"  almost  persuaded,"  are  held  back  from 
giving  their  adherence  to  the  movement 
through  fear  that  the  criticism  is  well 
founded. 

The  existence  of  such  a  widely  prevalent 
belief  must  be  the  result  of  causes  inherent 
either  in  the  principles  of  Socialism  or  in  the 
[68] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

history  of  the  movements  based  upon  those 
principles.  It  is,  therefore,  only  just  that  the 
Socialist,  when  he  makes  his  sweeping  denial 
that  Socialism  involves  the  suppression  of 
private  property  and  personal  liberty,  should 
be  asked  to  explain  the  persistence  of  the  fear 
he  declares  to  be  groundless  —  and  this  only 
as  a  prelude  to  an  equally  just  demand  for 
a  reasoned  statement  of  his  own  faith,  so  dif- 
ferent to  the  unfaith  of  the  world. 

The  frank  and  sincere  Socialist  will  be  slow 
to  attribute  the  criticism  to  malice.  He  will, 
on  the  contrary,  be  disposed  to  admit  that  it 
is  a  perfectly  natural  result  of  certain  phases 
of  the  evolution  of  Socialism  and  the  develop- 
ment of  its  propaganda.  He  will  admit, 
with  entire  good  faith,  that  Socialists  have 
given  their  opponents  ample  warrant  for  be- 
lieving that  with  the  coming  of  Socialism  pri- 
vate property  and  personal  liberty  must  cease. 
No  small  part  of  the  work  of  the  Socialists 
of  to-day  consists  in  undoing  the  work  of  an 
older  generation  of  Socialists. 

Proudhon's  famous  dictum,  "  Property  is 
[69] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

robbery,"  and  its  counterpart,  "  Property- 
holders  are  thieves,"  have  been  so  many  times 
reiterated  by  Socialists,  and  so  often  inscribed 
upon  their  banners,  that  no  sort  of  blame  at- 
taches to  those  persons  who,  taking  the  words 
at  their  face-value  in  the  currency  of  human 
speech,  have  concluded  that  Socialism  must 
abolish  all  kinds  of  private  property. 
Phrases  like  "  the  socialization  of  property  " 
abound  in  the  literature  of  Socialism,  and  in 
more  than  a  few  Socialist  programmes,  issued 
in  this  country  and  elsewhere,  Socialism  is  ob- 
jectively defined  as  "  the  social  ownership  and 
control  of  all  the  means  of  production,  distri- 
bution and  exchange."  The  definition  cer- 
tainly justifies  the  belief  that  the  existence  of 
a  Socialist  state  depends  upon  the  abolition 
of  private  property. 


[70] 


II 


TAKING  the  definition  literally,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  under  Socialism  nothing 
which  could  be  used  as  a  means  of  pro- 
ducing or  distributing  wealth  could  be  pri- 
vately owned.  No  man  could  own  a  spade, 
a  hammer  or  even  a  jack-knife,  for  these  are 
all  instruments  of  production.  No  woman 
could  own  a  sewing-machine,  or  even  a  needle, 
for  these  are  tools,  means  of  production. 
No  man  could  own  a  wheelbarrow,  no  woman 
could  own  a  market-basket,  these  being 
"  means  of  distribution."  The  differences 
between  a  spade  and  a  steam-plough,  between 
a  market-basket  and  a  delivery  van,  are  dif- 
ferences in  the  degree  of  their  efficiency 
merely. 

Now,  it  is  quite  evident  that,  if  we  are  to 
accept  this  definition  literally  and  to  regard 
"  the  social  ownership  and  control  of  all  the 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

means  of  production,  distribution  and  ex- 
change," as  a  sine  qua  non  of  Socialism,  we 
must  accept  the  verdict  that  it  would  destroy 
the  institutions  of  personal  property  and  lib- 
erty. The  amount  of  property  which  would 
not  come  within  the  scope  of  the  classification, 
"  all  means  of  production,  distribution  and 
exchange,"  is  almost  a  negligible  quantity, 
and  it  is  certain  that  such  a  vast  bureaucratic 
system  of  government  would  be  needed  as 
would  practically  extinguish  personal  liberty. 
It  requires  little  imagination  to  see  how  in- 
tolerable the  despotism  would  be  if  needles, 
spades,  sewing-machines  and  market-baskets 
were  to  be  under  the  control  of  governmental 
bureaus. 

But,  when  challenged  upon  this  important 
matter,  the  modern  Socialist  denies  that  the 
social  ownership  and  control  of  all  the  agen- 
cies of  production  and  distribution  is  a  sine 
qua  non  of  Socialism.  He  denies  that  his 
aim  is  anything  of  the  kind.  Socialism,  he 
says,  implies  the  social  ownership  and  control 
[72] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

only  of  certain  kinds  of  property,  certain  very 
definite  categories  of  productive  and  distribu- 
tive agencies.  Under  Socialism,  as  he  con- 
ceives it,  private  property  would  coexist  with 
social  property.  Indeed,  his  claim  is  that 
Socialism,  in  very  important  respects,  would 
extend  both  private  property  and  personal 
liberty. 

Therefore,  the  question  arises:  What 
things,  under  Socialism,  will  it  be  necessary 
to  socialize  and  what  to  leave  in  the  hands  of 
private  owners? 

The  reply  to  this  question  may  take  either 
of  two  forms :  either  we  may  attempt  to  cata- 
logue the  things  which  would  have  to  be  so- 
cialized in  order  to  realize  Socialism  —  a  stu- 
pendous task  —  or  we  may  attempt  to  state 
the  principle  of  differentiation  in  a  manner 
permitting  its  ready  application  to  any  form 
of  property,  at  any  time,  and  in  any  place. 
This  latter  is,  indeed,  the  only  practical  meth- 
od of  dealing  with  the  question.  Not  only  is 
the  former  method  a  cumbersome  one,  in- 
[73] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

volving  the  gigantic  task  of  making  an  inven- 
tory of  all  kinds  of  property,  but  endless  re- 
vision of  the  list  would  be  necessary  to  make 
it  conform  to  changing  conditions  and  to  the 
needs  of  particular  localities. 


[74] 


Ill 


PRELIMINARY  to  the  attempt  to  state 
the  principles  of  differentiation,  how- 
ever, a  brief  discussion  of  the  nature  of 
property  seems  to  be  necessary.  If  we  ask 
ourselves,  What  is  Property?  and,  instead  of 
repeating  Proudhon's  classic  epigrammatic  re- 
ply, attempt  to  answer  the  question  with  the 
seriousness  it  demands,  we  shall  soon  discover 
that  much  of  what  we  have  regarded  as  a  con- 
crete entity  is,  in  fact,  a  mere  abstraction :  that 
property  is  not  a  tangible  thing,  in  a  vast  num- 
ber of  instances,  but  an  assumed  relation. 
We  shall  discover,  too,  that  there  are  no  abso- 
lute property  rights  anywhere. 

While  it  is  true  that  the  recognition  of  pri- 
vate property  marks  the  emergence  of  man- 
kind from  savagery,  and  that  civilization  is 
commonly  said  to  rest  upon  that  recognition, 
the  paradox  is  nevertheless  true  that  civiliza- 
[75] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

tion  and  private  property,  in  an  absolute 
sense,  are  incompatible.  The  jurisprudence 
of  all  civilized  countries  rests  upon  the  re- 
pudiation of  absolute  property  rights  of  any 
kind  whatever.  Taxation  is,  of  course,  a  fa- 
miliar example  of  the  collective  disregard  of 
private  property  rights.  All  kinds  of  prop- 
erty have  been  subjected  to  taxation,  the  col- 
lective authority  exercising  the  right  to  take 
any  part  of  any  man's  property,  or  even  the 
whole  of  it.  Henry  George's  proposal  to 
impose  a  tax  upon  land  values  equal  to  the 
sum  total  of  such  values  is  a  perfectly  logical 
extension  of  the  principle  of  taxation.  A 
few  years  ago,  the  city  council  of  Copenhagen, 
Denmark,  applied  the  method  to  the  street 
railways  of  that  city  with  entire  success,  so 
that  the  owning  companies  were  glad  to  sur- 
render the  lines. 

The  powers  of  domain  and  ultimate  owner- 
ship which  underlie  the  jurisprudence  of  ev- 
ery civilized  nation  prove  conclusively  that 
there  is  no  allodial  property  in  land,  nor  any 
form  of  absolute  private  property.  A  state 
[76] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

or  municipality  desires  land  which  is  the 
44  property  "  of  one  of  its  citizens  for  some 
public  purpose,  such  as  building  a  hospital 
or  a  bridge,  making  a  park  or  a  roadway. 
The  "  owner  "  of  the  land  does  not  agree  to 
sell  it,  whereupon  the  state  or  the  municipal- 
ity takes  the  land  from  him  —  often  at  its 
own  valuation!  Even  when  the  land  is 
needed  by  a  quasi-private  corporation,  such  as 
a  railway  company,  the  collective  power  is 
used  to  take  away  the  ownership  of  the  land 
from  one  citizen  and  transfer  it  to  others. 

It  is  very  commonly  assumed  that  this  pow- 
er of  ultimate  ownership  resting  in  society, 
through  its  government,  applies  only  to  land ; 
but,  in  fact,  no  form  of  property  is  exempt 
from  it.  Not  only  may  all  forms  of  prop- 
erty be  taxed,  but  likewise  all  forms  of  prop- 
erty may  be  sequestrated.  The  power  exer- 
cised in  times  of  martial  law,  of  seizing  food 
and  other  supplies,  is  an  example  of  this. 
Under  the  police  powers  of  all  civilized  com- 
munities, in  case  of  serious  accident  or  dis- 
aster, the  home  of  any  person,  and  anything 

[77] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

it  contains,  may  be  lawfully  seized  and  used. 
Suppose  that,  during  the  San  Francisco  earth- 
quake and  fire,  the  "  owner  "  of  a  supply  of 
food  or  drugs,  or  any  other  vital  necessity, 
should  have  clung  to  them,  asserting  his 
"  ownership,"  does  any  sane  person  believe 
that  he  would  have  been  permitted  to  enforce 
his  sacred  "  rights  "  against  the  need  of  the 
community?  Nothing,  not  even  one's  pock- 
et-handkerchief, can  be  said  to  be  exempt 
from  this  ultimate  power  of  society.  If, 
therefore,  one's  handkerchief  is  not  taken 
away  from  him,  it  is  simply  because  the  com- 
munity does  not  desire  to  take  it.  In  the  last 
analysis,  private  property  is  an  abstraction.  It 
consists  of  nothing  more  than  a  relation  be- 
tween the  community  and  the  citizen,  and 
rests  upon  nothing  more  tangible  than  com- 
munity good-will. 

Furthermore,  in  the  development  of  capi- 
talist society  the  substance  of  private  property 
tends  to  disappear,  quite  irrespective  of  the 
enforcement  of  the  ultimate  powers  of  owner- 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

ship  by  society.  Prior  to  the  formation  of 
joint-stock  companies,  in  the  era  of  individ* 
ual  capitals,  the  investor  who  invested  his 
money  in  a  ship  or  a  factory  could  say  that 
the  ship  or  the  factory  belonged  to  him.  But 
with  the  coming  of  the  joint-stock  company 
and  the  development  of  the  great  industrial 
corporations,  that  could  not  be  said.  Sup- 
pose X  to  be  a  shareholder  in  a  corporation 
which  owns  a  cotton-mill.  There  are  a 
thousand  shareholders  owning  between  them 
the  ten  thousand  shares  of  stock  of  the  cor- 
poration. X  owns  ten  shares.  But  he  does 
not  own  a  one-thousandth  part  of  the  physical 
properties  of  the  cotton-mill  in  any  real  sense. 
He  could  not,  for  instance,  go  into  the  mill 
and  say :  "  Here  are  a  thousand  looms :  one 
belongs  to  me.  I  will  take  it  away." 

What  X  really  owns  is  a  one-thousandth 
part  of  every  brick  in  the  building,  not  a  sin- 
gle whole  brick;  a  one-thousandth  part  of 
each  cog  in  every  machine,  but  not  a  single 
whole  wheel;  a  one-thousandth  part  of  every 
[79] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

yard  of  cotton,  but  not  a  single  yard  of  actual 
cotton.  X  could  not  realize  his  own  proper- 
ty, separate  it  from  that  of  the  other  nine- 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  shareholders  and  do 
as  he  pleased  with  it.  To  get  at  his  one- 
thousandth  part  of  a  brick,  he  must  destroy 
the  whole  brick.  To  actually  realize  his  own 
property  as  a  physical  entity,  he  must  destroy 
it  and  the  property  of  his  fellows.  And 
then,  paradoxically  (for  the  whole  capitalist 
system  is  a  paradox) ,  he  does  not  realize  it  at 
all.  When  he  has  destroyed  the  brick  and 
extracted  his  one-thousandth  part  of  it,  he 
does  not  own  a  one-thousandth  part  of  a 
brick,  but  only  some  fragments  of  burned 
clay. 

However  we  look  at  it,  private  property 
under  our  present  social  system  is  an  abstrac- 
tion. The  property  of  the  citizen  in  the  im- 
mense assets  of  the  State  of  New  York,  or 
of  the  United  States,  is  just  as  real  as  the 
property  of  the  shareholder  in  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation.  But  there  is  this 
important  difference,  that  the  citizen's  share; 
[80] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

is  not  negotiable;  it  may  not  be  transferred. 
It  cannot  be  gambled  with  in  the  market, 
whereas  that  of  the  shareholder  in  the  cor- 
poration may  be  and  commonly  is. 


[81] 


IV 


/COLLECTIVE  ownership  is  not  the  ulti- 
^-*A  mate,  fundamental  condition  of  Social- 
ism. It  is  proposed  only  as  a  means  to 
an  end,  not  as  an  end  in  itself.  And  that  end, 
to  the  attainment  of  which  collective  owner- 
ship is  the  means,  is  the  fundamental  condition 
of  Socialism.  The  central  idea  of  modern 
Socialism,  its  spirit,  is  the  doctrine  of  the  divi- 
sion of  society  into  antagonistic  classes.  The 
producers  of  wealth  are  exploited  by  a  class 
of  capitalists  draining  from  them  a  "  surplus 
value,"  and,  instinctively,  they  struggle 
against  the  exploitation,  to  reduce  the  amount 
of  the  surplus  value  taken  by  the  capitalists 
to  a  minimum  —  ultimately  to  zero.  To  do 
away  with  that  exploitation,  to  destroy  the 
power  of  one  class  to  live  upon  the  labors 
of  another  class,  is  the  Socialist  aim.  So- 
cial ownership  and  control  are  only  proposed 
[82] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

as  means  to  the  attainment  of  that  end.  If 
other  means  toward  that  end,  quicker,  more 
efficient  or  more  certain  means,  can  be  found, 
there  is  nothing  in  Socialism  to  prevent  their 
adoption. 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  to  make  collec- 
tive property  of  things  not  used  to  exploit 
labor  does  not,  necessarily,  form  part  of  the 
Socialist  programme.  It  is  easy  to  see  that, 
according  to  this  principle  of  differentiation, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  socialize  the  rail- 
roads, but  not  at  all  necessary  to  socialize  a 
wheelbarrow.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  that 
a  woman  might  support  herself  through  the 
possession  of  a  sewing-machine  who  would 
otherwise  be  obliged  to  submit  to  exploitation 
as  a  factory  worker.  To  secure  her  the 
ownership  of  the  machine  would,  therefore, 
be  no  departure  from  Socialist  principles. 
On  the  contrary,  in  her  individual  case,  the 
aims  of  the  Socialist  would  be  realized  in 
that  she  would  be  placed  beyond  the  power 
of  the  exploiter  of  labor.  Similarly,  in  the 
case  of  the  farmer  with  a  small  farm,  and  of* 
[83] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

the  craftsman  with  his  own  tools,  or  of 
groups  of  workers  working  co-operatively, 
there  is  no  exploitation;  no  surplus  value  is 
extracted  from  their  labor  by  any  outside  par- 
ties. Consequently,  being  neither  exploited 
nor  exploiters,  their  independent  self-employ- 
ment is  quite  consistent  with  Socialism. 

As  the  Socialist  movement  has  outgrown 
the  influence  of  the  early  Utopians,  which 
touched  even  Marx  and  Engels,  it  has  given 
up  the  old  notions  of  a  regimentation  of  la- 
bor under  the  direction  of  the  State.  It  is 
increasingly  evident  that  the  Socialists  of  to- 
day have  abandoned  the  habit  of  speculating 
upon  the  practical  application  of  their  prin- 
ciples in  future  society.  They  are  insisting 
more  and  more  that  Socialism  be  regarded 
as  a  principle  —  namely,  the  conscious  elim- 
ination of  the  power  of  an  idle  class  in  so- 
ciety to  exploit  the  wealth-producers.  What- 
ever tends  toward  that  end  of  eliminating 
the  exploiter  from  society  contributes  to  the 
fulfillment  of  the  Socialist  ideal. 
[84] 


The   Substance    o'f  Socialism 

Instead  of  the  old  contention  that,  in  order 
to  have  Socialism,  every  petty  industry  must 
be  destroyed  by  the  power  of  great  indus- 
trial corporations,  and  every  small  farm  swal- 
lowed up  by  great  bonanza  farms  of  vast 
acreage,  it  is  now  recognized  by  most  of  the 
leading  exponents  of  Socialism  in  this  coun- 
try and  Europe  that  the  small  workshop  and 
the  small  farm  may  enter  very  largely  into 
the  economic  structure  of  the  Socialist  State. 
The  small  farm  has  thus  far  proved  capable 
of  more  economical  cultivation  than  farms  of 
immense  acreage;  and  it  may  be,  as  some 
authorities  contend,  that  small  workshops 
will  prove  quite  as  economical  as,  or  even 
more  economical  than,  great  industries  when 
the  thousand  hampering  restrictions  and  dis- 
criminations and  privileges  which  favor  their 
greater  rivals  are  removed. 

Should  this  prove  to  be  the  case,  there 
would  be  nothing  to  prevent  a  process  of  de- 
centralization of  industry  taking  place  under 
Socialism;  a  process  of  decentralization  so 
[85] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

far-reaching  that  private  ownership  and  in- 
dividual production  would  be  much  more  dif- 
fused than  now.  The  participation  of  the 
State  in  industry  would  be  confined  to  the  op- 
eration of  railroads,  mines  and  other  great 
natural  monopolies,  and  to  the  carrying  on 
of  the  great  fundamental  public  services 
which  rest  upon  natural  monopolies,  leaving 
to  individual  enterprise  and  voluntary  co- 
operation vastly  more  scope  than  these  enjoy 
to-day  in  production  and  distribution.  Need- 
less to  say,  this  is  not  a  prophecy,  but  simply 
a  statement  of  possibilities. 

The  important  point  to  be  remembered  is 
that  there  is  no  principle  of  scientific  Social- 
ism which  is  opposed  to  the  continuance  of 
private  property  or  private  industrial  enter- 
prise, so  that  it  involves  no  exploitation  of 
the  laborer  by  the  non-laborer.  It  needs  but 
the  statement  of  this  principle  to  demonstrate 
its  truth.  B  is  a  farmer,  working  upon  his 
own  small  farm.  He  exploits  no  man's  la- 
bor, but  manages  to  maintain  himself  and 
[86] 


T H e   Substance    o'f  Socialism 

family  in  comfort.  C  is  a  shoemaker,  own- 
ing his  own  little  shop  and  his  own  tools. 
He,  also,  exploits  no  man's  labor,  but  man- 
ages to  support  himself  and  his  family  com- 
fortably. What  reason  could  the  State  have 
for  forbidding  these  men  to  employ  them- 
selves, denying  them  the  right  to  exchange 
their  products,  shoes  for  farm  produce,  and 
compelling  them  to  enter  industrial  or  agri- 
cultural regiments  as  employees  of  the 
State?* 

*  As  the  proofs  of  these  pages  are  being  revised  there 
comes  from  the  highest  possible  source  interesting  and 
emphatic  confirmation  of  this  position.  By  a  referen- 
dum vote  of  the  entire  membership  of  the  Socialist 
Party  important  changes  have  been  made  in  its  na- 
tional platform.  One  clause  in  the  platform  demanded: 

"  The  collective  ownership  of  railroads,  telegraphs, 
telephones,  steamboat  lines,  and  all  other  means  of  so- 
cial transportation  and  communication,  and  all  land." 

By  an  overwhelming  majority,  the  members  of  the 
Socialist  Party  decided  to  amend  the  platform  by  omit- 
ting the  words  "and  all  land."  It  was  also  decided  to 
amend  the  statement  of  "  General  Principles  "  contained 
in  the  platform  by  inserting  the  following  significant 
paragraph : 

"There  can  be  no  absolute  private  title  to  land.    All 

[87] 


The   Substance    oj  Socialism 

Socialism,  it  cannot  be  too  strongly  em- 
phasized, is  not  the  fulfillment  of  a  great  plan 
of  social  organization,  the  principal  feature 
of  which  is  that  the  State  owns  and  controls 
everything  and  aims  to  administer  things 
with  approximate  equality  of  benefits  and  du- 
ties. It  is  an  ideal,  objectively  considered, 
of  a  society  in  which  there  is  no  parasitic 
class  preying  upon  the  wealth-producers. 
Subjectively  considered,  it  is  a  struggle  on  the 
part  of  the  producers  to  throw  off  the  ex- 
ploiters, the  parasites,  in  order  that  the  ideal 
may  be  attained. 

Of  course,  under  Socialism,   as  in  every 

private  titles,  whether  called  fee  simple  or  otherwise, 
are  and  must  be  subordinate  to  the  public  title.  The 
Socialist  Party  strives  to  prevent  land  from  being  used 
for  the  purpose  of  exploitation  and  speculation.  It  de- 
mands the  collective  possession,  control  or  manage- 
ment of  land  to  whatever  extent  may  be  necessary  to 
attain  that  end.  It  is  not  opposed  to  the  occupation 
and  possession  of  land  by  those  using  it  in  a  useful  and 
bona  fide  manner  without  exploitation." 

It  can,  I  think,  be  fairly  claimed  that  these  amend- 
ments conclusively  prove  that  the  views  advanced  in 
these  pages  are  thoroughly  representative  of  the  views 
of  American  Socialists  generally. —  J.  S. 

[88] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

civilized  society,  private  property  of  all  kinds 
would  be  subject  to  the  ultimate  rule  of  so- 
ciety. The  interests  of  society  as  a  whole, 
that  is  to  say,  would  be  regarded  as  superior 
to  those  of  the  individual.  Subject  to  this 
superior  social  right,  there  is  no  reason  why 
private  property  should  not  be  far  more  wide- 
spread under  Socialism  than  to-day.  Take, 
for  example,  the  matter  of  homes.  The 
great  mass  of  the  people  do  not  own  their 
own  homes,  though  there  can  hardly  be  any 
question  that  the  great  mass  of  people  desire 
to  own  homes  of  their  own.  It  is  conceiv- 
able that  in  a  Socialist  state  of  society  every 
person  who  desired  it  could  own  a  home  for 
himself  and  family.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
is  not  conceivable  that  the  State  would  have 
any  interest  whatsoever  in  forbidding  the 
ownership  of  homes.  Since  all  families  must 
have  homes  in  which  to  live,  whether  pro- 
vided by  the  State  or  otherwise,  there  could 
be  no  reason  for  the  State's  insisting  upon 
being  the  universal  landlord.  Government 
ownership  of  dwellings  in  preference  to  the 

[89] 


The  S  uti  st'an  c  e   o'f  Socialism 

ownership  of  the  dwellings  of  the  many  by 
a  few  extortioners,  certainly;  but  there  is  no 
more  reason,  so  far  as  the  central  principle 
of  Socialism  is  concerned,  for  denying  the 
right  of  a  man  to  own  his  home  than  there 
is  to  deny  him  the  right  to  own  his  hat. 


[90] 


V 


FROM  the  foregoing  it  will  be  seen  that 
not  only  does  Socialism  not  involve  the 
abolition  of  all  private  property,  but 
that,  on  the  contrary,  a  wide  extension  of  pri- 
vate property  is  quite  compatible  with  Social- 
ism as  taught  by  Marx  and  his  followers.  It 
is  not  an  insignificant  thing  that  the  Socialist 
party  of  the  United  States,  in  its  national  plat- 
form of  1904,  charged  that  "  Capitalism  is 
the  enemy  and  destroyer  of  essential  private 
property."  The  Socialist  protest  against 
capitalism  is  that  it  destroys  the  economic 
independence  of  the  producers.  The  restor- 
ation of  that  independence  is  the  grand  aim 
of  all  Socialist  endeavor. 

Failure  to  recognize  with  clearness  the 
principle  set  forth  in  the  foregoing  pages  pro- 
duces inability  to  distinguish  between  Gov- 
ernment ownership  and  Socialism.  Many 


'The   Substance    of  Socialism 

persons  marvel  that  the  Socialists  do  not  hail 
with  gladness,  and  join  forces  with,  the  vari- 
ous movements  aiming  at  public  ownership 
as  they  arise,  and  thus  achieve  Socialism 
piecemeal.  Every  proposal  to  extend  the 
area  of  Government  ownership  and  manage- 
ment is  at  once  hailed  as  a  "  step  toward  So- 
cialism." For  example,  a  strong  movement 
arises  for  the  Government  ownership  of  in- 
terstate railroads,  or  the  telegraph  systems, 
and  people  wonder  that  the  Socialists  pre- 
serve their  equanimity,  stand  aloof,  appar- 
ently unconcerned,  and  decline  to  join  the 
movement.  Such  persons  confound  —  as 
many  Socialists  do  —  the  external  forms  of 
the  Socialist  programme,  its  non-essentials, 
with  its  fundamental,  essential  principle. 
They  do  not  see  that  the  form  of  ownership 
is  relatively  unimportant  according  to  the  So- 
cialist philosophy. 

It  is  quite  as  possible  for  a  Government 
to  exploit  the  workers  in  the  interests  of  a 
privileged  class  as  it  is  for  private  individ- 
uals, or  quasi-private  corporations,  to  do  so. 
[92] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

Germany  with  her  state-owned  railroads,  or 
Austria-Hungary  and  Russia  with  their  great 
Government  monopolies,  are  not  more  Social- 
istic, but  less  so,  than  the  United  States, 
where  these  things  are  owned  by  individ- 
uals or  corporations.  The  United  States  is 
nearer  Socialism  for  the  reason  that  its  po- 
litical institutions  have  developed  farther  to- 
ward pure  democracy  than  those  of  the  other 
countries  named.  True,  in  Germany,  Aus- 
tria-Hungary, Russia  and  other  countries  of 
the  Old  World,  there  is  a  good  deal  of  Gov- 
ernment ownership,  but  the  Governments  are 
class  Governments  and  the  workers  are  ex- 
ploited for  the  benefit  of  the  ruling  classes. 
Obviously,  the  workers  are  no  better  off  as 
a  result  of  changing  the  channel  of  exploita- 
tion merely,  while  the  amount  of  exploita- 
tion is  left  unchanged.  The  real  motif  of 
Socialism  is  not  merely  to  change  the  form  i 
of  industrial  organization  and  ownership, 
but  to  eliminate  exploitation. 

To  sum  up :  the  whole  matter  may  be  very 
briefly  expressed  in  the  form  of  a  declaration 
[93] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

of  principles,  as  follows:  Socialism  is  not 
hostile  to  private  property,  except  where  such 
property  is  used  to  exploit  the  labor  of  others 
than  its  owners.  The  socialization  of  prop- 
erty in  the  Socialist  State  would  be  confined 
to  ( i )  such  things  as  in  their  nature  could 
not  be  held  by  private  owners  without  sub- 
jecting the  community  to  exploitation  or  hu- 
miliation; (2)  such  things  as  the  citizens 
might  agree  to  own  in  common  to  attain  su- 
perior efficiency  in  their  management. 


[94] 


VI 


GRANTED  the  foregoing  conclusions,  it 
is  evident  that  the  fear  of  a  huge  bu- 
reaucratic Government  as  an  inevitable 
condition  of  Socialism  loses  its  force.  Such 
a  bureaucracy  might  be  created,  it  is  true,  but 
it  would  not  result  inevitably  from  the  amount 
of  administrative  work  involved  in  the  man- 
agement of  all  property  and  "  all  the  means 
of  production,  distribution  and  exchange." 
In  fact,  there  is  no  good  reason  for  disbeliev- 
ing the  claim  made  by  modern  Socialists  that 
the  amount  of  Government  control  over  the 
individual  would  be  far  less  than  we  are  now 
accustomed  to. 

In  this  connection  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  regulation  of  capitalistic  property  in 
modern  society,  especially  in  the  great  social 
services  —  such  as  the  railroads,  lighting 
companies  and  the  like  —  involves  an  enor- 
[95] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

mous  amount  of  government  which,  under 
such  a  condition  as  that  suggested  as  belong- 
ing to  Socialism,  would  be  wholly  superflu- 
ous. When  one  thinks  of  the  tremendous 
amount  of  legislative  and  administrative  ef- 
fort which  experience,  not  theorizing,  has 
shown  to  be  requisite  for  the  restraint  of  cap- 
italist enterprise,  the  mind  is  staggered  by 
the  stupendous  total.  No  one  knows,  for  it 
has  never  been  computed,  how  much  it  has 
cost  the  United  States  during  the  last  ten. 
years  to  "  regulate  "  the  railroads  in  their 
relations  to  the  public.  This  much  we  do 
know  —  that  it  has  been  found  necessary  to 
enact  an  immense  body  of  legislation  for  the 
regulation  of  capitalistic  enterprise.  To  en- 
act this  legislation  has  cost  an  enormous  sum 
of  money;  to  enforce  it  has  cost  a  great  deal 
more  in  the  way  of  maintaining  an  army  of 
inspectors,  judges  and  officials  of  one  sort 
and  another. 

It  has  been  said  in  criticism  of  the  methods 
of  conducting  our  public  services  that  the 
[96] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

amount  actually  spent  in  doing  the  work  is  in 
many  cases  only  a  fraction  of  the  total  cost. 
To  illustrate :  the  actual  operation  of  a  street 
railway,  including  the  men  who  make  the  cars 
and  lay  the  tracks,  the  men  in  the  power- 
house, motormen  and  conductors,  is  said  to 
represent  less  labor  than  what  may  be  called 
the  bookkeeping  of  the  railway  —  the  army 
of  "  spotters,"  inspectors,  collectors,  cashiers, 
clerks,  bookkeepers,  accountants  and  the  like. 
Most  of  these  workers  are  in  reality  para- 
sites; their  labor  is  only  rendered  necessary 
by  the  preying  of  private  interests  upon  the 
body  social. 

Similarly,  it  may  be  said  that  much  of  our 
Government  is  in  a  like  manner  parasitic,  ren- 
dered necessary  only  by  the  preying  of  pri- 
vate interests  upon  the  body  social.  The  so- 
cialization of  all  the  natural  monopolies  and 
the  restoration  of  economic  independence  to 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  would  render 
obsolete  an  astonishingly  large  body  of  laws, 
many  of  them  irritating  and  humiliating  to  a 
[97] 


The   Substance   o'f  Socialism 

degree  that  is  oppressive,  and  would  turn  a 
large  army  of  workers  from  parasitic  to  gen- 
uinely useful  occupations. 

Every  abuse  of  capitalism  calls  forth  a 
fresh  installment  of  legislation  restrictive  of 
personal  liberty,  with  an  army  of  prying  offi- 
cials. Legislators  keep  busy  making  laws, 
judges  keep  busy  interpreting  and  enforcing 
them,  and  a  swarm  of  petty  officials  are  kept 
busy  attending  to  this  intricate  machine  of 
popular  government.  In  sober  truth,  it  must 
be  said  that  capitalism  has  created,  and  could 
not  exist  without,  the  very  bureaucracy  it 
charges  Socialism  with  attempting  to  foist 
upon  the  nation. 

There  is,  then,  nothing  in  Socialism  itself 
to  warrant  the  assumption  that  it  would  en- 
thrall the  individual  to  the  yoke  of  a  bureau- 
cratic government.  There  is  no  reason  for 
regarding  as  impossible  and  absurd  the  as- 
sumption that,  under  a  Socialist  regime,  the 
bounds  of  personal  liberty  would  be  greatly 
extended  and  the  scope  of  government 
greatly  narrowed.  Whatever  views  one  may 
[98] 


The    Substance    of  Social  ism 

entertain  concerning  Socialism,  either  as  an 
ideal  or  as  a  movement,  it  is  necessary  and 
just  to  weigh  seriously  the  claim,  made  in  the 
national  platform  of  the  Socialist  party  for 
the  year  1904,  that  it  is  "  the  only  political 
movement  standing  for  the  programme  and 
principles  by  which  the  liberty  of  the  indi- 
vidual may  become  a  fact."  And,  further, 
that  "  it  comes  to  rescue  the  people  from  the 
fast-increasing  and  successful  assault  of  capi- 
talism upon  the  liberty  of  the  individual." 
That  claim  cannot  be  waved  aside  by  mere 
rhetoric,  nor  silenced  by  abuse.  The  fact 
remains  that  Socialism  menaces  neither  pri- 
vate property  nor  personal  liberty.  There  is 
nothing  inconsistent  with  Socialism  in  the  idea 
that  Government  interference  with  the  indi- 
vidual should  be  as  little  as  possible. 

It  will  be  said,  doubtless,  that  the  princi- 
ples and  the  programme  here  sketched  are 
those  of  Individualism  rather  than  of  Social- 
ism as  commonly  understood.  Granted  that 
they  satisfy  the  man  who  calls  himself  an 
Individualist,  they  are  not  therefore  anti-So- 

[99] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

cialist.  Socialism  is  not  the  antithesis  of  In- 
dividualism —  except  Individualism  of  the 
'*  Devil-take-the-hindmost,"  laissez  faire, 
school.  To  that  crude  form  of  individual- 
ism, so-called,  which  accepts  the  doctrine  that 
"  Might  is  Right,"  under  which  the  asser- 
tion of  one  man's  might  destroys  the  indi- 
vidual liberty  of  others,  Socialists  are  op- 
posed, just  as  the  enlightened  Individualist 
must  be  opposed.  To  the  Individualism  that 
is  based  upon  equality  of  opportunity,  the  ab- 
sence of  privilege  and  the  destruction  of  all 
artificial  inequalities,  so  that  Nature's  inequal- 
ities alone  manifest  themselves,  Socialism  is 
not  opposed.  Indeed,  Socialism  comes  as 
the  fulfillment  of  that  ideal. 

Ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  persons 
discussing  this  subject  not  only  regard  So- 
cialism, as  the  antithesis  of  Individualism 
without  any  qualification  whatsoever,  but 
they  make  the  far  more  serious  blunder  of 
regarding  the  present  social  system  —  if,  in- 
deed, one  may  use  the  word  "  system  "  to 
connote  our  industrial  anarchy !  —  as  a  sys- 
[  100  ] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

tern  of  Individualism.  Nothing  could  be 
more  fallacious  than  this.  The  Individual- 
ism of  the  Fathers  of  the  Republic,  particu- 
larly of  Jefferson  and  Samuel  Adams,  bears 
no  relation  to  our  present  system  with  its 
ramifications  of  privilege.  Free  competition 
between  man  and  man  belongs  to  the  concept 
of  Individualism,  but  not  so  the  competition, 
so-called,  which  takes  place  between  the  cor- 
poration and  the  individual.  To  make  an 
artificial  person,  for  legal  purposes,  of  a 
great  corporation  such  as  the  Standard  Oil 
Company,  and  then  to  regard  a  struggle  be- 
tween it  and  an  individual  refiner  or  dealer 
as  "  free  competition,"  is  to  do  violence  to 
language  and  reason. 

Illustrative  of  the  confusion  of  thought 
upon  this  subject  which  pervades  all  ranks  of 
society,  we  have  the  declaration  of  the  Ohio 
Republican  Convention,  in  asserting  the 
claims  of  Mr.  Taft  to  be  the  successor  of 
President  Roosevelt,  defining  the  issue  in 
American  politics  in  the  year  1908  as  "  In- 
dividualism against  Socialism  " —  the  Repub- 
[101] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

lican  party  and  Mr.  Taft  representing  Indi- 
vidualism !  Could  anything  be  more  gro- 
tesque than  the  application  of  the  word  In- 
dividualism to  the  Rooseveltian  policies? 
Could  the  word  be  more  abused  than  by  its 
application  to  the  Republican  party  pro- 
gramme? If  Socialism  represents  one  side 
of  the  issue  fought  out  in  our  national  poli- 
tics in  1908,  the  other  side  is  not  Individ- 
ualism, but  Capitalism  with  its  privileges,  its 
invasions  of  personal  liberty,  its  artificial  in- 
equalities and  its  economic  servitude  of  class 
to  class. 

The  Socialist  ideal  may  be  vain  and  chi- 
merical, but  no  thinking  person  can  deny  that 
the  influence  of  the  ideal  upon  masses  of  our 
citizens  is  a  wholesome  one.  The  political 
Socialist  movement  may  spend  itself  blazing 
trails  for  others  to  follow,  opening  a  way  to 
a  promised  land  it  may  not  enter;  but  the 
world  will  be  the  better  for  its  existence. 
Fanaticism,  in  the  name  of  Socialism,  and 
under  its  banners,  may  seek  to  do  away  with 
private  property  and  personal  liberty;  but 
[  102] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

that  will  be  a  caricature  of  the  Socialism  for 
which  so  many  millions  of  earnest  men  and 
women  in  all  lands  are  living  lives  of  conse- 
crated sacrifice. 


[  103  ] 


Ill 

THE  MORAL  VALUE 
OF  CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS 


IN  the  popular  literature  of  political  Social- 
ism no  phrase  is  more  frequently  encoun- 
tered than  "  class  consciousness,"  and  no 
other  phrase  has  been  so  bitterly  attacked 
and  denounced  by  the  enemies  of  Socialism. 
It  has  provided  the  text  for  many  of  the 
fiercest  onslaughts  upon  the  Socialist  theory 
and  the  Socialist  movement.  When  Mr. 
Roosevelt,  during  his  term  of  office  as  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  denounced  the  So- 
cialists for  preaching  "  the  foul  doctrine  of 
class  consciousness  "  he  simply  voiced  with 
characteristic  vigor  a  very  common  and  wide- 
spread feeling. 

It  may  be  that  the  Socialists  themselves, 
rather  than  the  doctrine  itself,  are  responsible 
for  this  feeling.  Possibly  much  of  the  bit- 
ter hatred  with  which  so  many  good  people 
regard  the  doctrine  is  due  to  the  failure  of  its 
[107] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

'  exponents  to  state  it  clearly  and  with  wisdom. 
However  that  may  be,  no  sane  Socialist,  and 
no  citizen  seriously  desiring  the  peaceful  and 
just  solution  of  the  momentous  issues  in- 
volved in  the  challenge  which  Socialism 
brings  to  society,  can  afford  to  treat  the  mat- 
ter with  light-hearted  indifference,  or  fail  to 
desire  the  removal  of  all  misunderstanding 
and  prejudice. 

Now,  there  are  at  least  three  propositions 
upon  which  all  earnest  and  thoughtful  men 
and  women,  whether  Socialists  or  not,  ought 
to  be  able  to  agree: 

First:  If  the  doctrine  of  class  conscious- 
ness is  the  wicked  thing  implied  by  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  denunciation  of  it,  if  it  is  untrue 
and  anti-social,  it  should  be  opposed  by  all 
good  citizens  by  every  legitimate  means;  and 
if  the  Socialist  theory  and  programme  neces- 
sarily rest  upon  it,  opposition  to  Socialism 
becomes  a  civic  duty;  while  if  there  is  no  such 
necessary  connection  between  the  doctrine 
and  the  Socialist  theory  and  programme  the 
[108] 


TKe   Substance    o'f  Socialism 

Socialists  should  frankly  and  at  once  aban- 
don it. 

Second:  If  the  opposition  to  the  doctrine 
springs  from  misunderstanding,  due  either  to 
the  failure  of  its  advocates  to  state  it  clearly 
and  wisely,  or  to  the  failure  of  its  critics  to 
give  it  careful  and  candid  study,  or  to  both 
causes  combined,  all  good  men  and  women, 
regardless  of  party  or  creed,  should  aim  at  re- 
moving the  misunderstanding  and  welcome 
every  honest  and  intelligent  effort  to  place 
the  discussion  of  the  subject  upon  the  plane 
of  calm  reason,  above  the  evil  influence  of 
prejudice. 

Third:  If,  when  properly  stated,  the  doc- 
trine is  found  to  be  true  and  helpful,  all  who 
have  the  interests  of  the  Republic  at  heart 
should  support  it,  regardless  of  ignorant 
prejudice,  and  should  steadfastly  and  sternly 
rebuke  all  demagogues,  of  whatever  station 
in  life,  who  seek  to  oppose  it  by  misrepre- 
sentation and  appeals  to  passion  and  preju- 
dice. 

[  I09] 


The   Substance    o'f  Socialism 

There  will  be  little  dissent  from  these  plat- 
itudes. They  form  a  platform  on  which  all 
who  are  actuated  by  a  sense  of  wise  civic 
patriotism  can  stand.  What  we  have  most 
reason  to  desire  is  calm  reasoning  concerning 
all  our  great  social  and  political  problems,  en- 
tirely free  from  passion  and  prejudice;  what 
we  have  most  reason  to  fear  is  an  appeal  to 
base  passion  and  prejudice.  No  man  is 
quite  so  dangerous  in  a  democracy  as  he  who 
appeals  to  prejudice  instead  of  to  reason. 
All  such  demagogues  should  be  sternly  re- 
buked, and  the  higher  their  station  and 
greater  their  influence  the  more  need  is  there 
to  rebuke  them.  Upon  this  and  every  other 
great  question  we  need  to  adopt  the  attitude 
indicated  by  the  cry  of  the  ancient  prophet 
of  Israel,  "  Come,  let  us  reason  together." 

In  that  spirit,  then,  I  desire  to  present  the 
moral  value  of  this  doctrine  of  class  con- 
sciousness as  I  conceive  it.  I  have  long  be- 
lieved that  the  most  bitter  and  relentless  at- 
tacks upon  the  doctrine  arise  from  misunder- 
standing and  misinterpretation  of  its  mean- 
[no] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

ing.  That  its  Socialist  advocates  are  wholly 
free  from  responsibility  for  this,  that  they 
have  invariably  presented  the  doctrine  with 
candor,  thoughtfulness  and  care,  it  is  im- 
possible to  believe.  Upon  both  sides  of  the 
discussion  there  has  been  much  crudeness  and 
recklessness  of  statement.  The  temper  of 
the  discussion  has  been  wholly  controversial, 
and  in  the  heat  of  controversy  the  weaknesses 
of  human  nature  assert  themselves. 


II 


MOST  of  those  who  have  assailed  the  So- 
cialists for  preaching  the  doctrine  of 
class  consciousness  seem  to  have  be- 
lieved that  the  Socialists  deliberately  aim  to 
create  class  antagonisms;  that  they  desire  to 
set  class  against  class,  and  therefore  strive  to 
engender  a  spirit  of  bitter  hatred  on  the  part 
of  the  wage-workers  against  the  capitalists. 
Of  course,  that  would  be  a  monstrous  thing  to 
do,  a  thing  to  be  abhorred  by  all  right-think- 
ing men  and  women.  If  that  were  a  true  in- 
terpretation of  the  doctrine  or  of  its  practical 
consequences,  its  preachers  would  merit  the 
treatment  we  accord  to  the  unhappy  victims 
of  homicidal  mania.  Every  thoughtful  So- 
cialist recognizes  this  as  clearly  as  the  most 
acute  critic  of  Socialism  can  do. 

But  indeed  the  doctrine  of  class  conscious- 
ness involves  none  of  the  evil  implications 

[112] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

thus  set  forth,  and  those  who  oppose  it  for 
any  such  reasons  are  attacking  a  hideous 
caricature  only.  The  class  conscious  Social- 
ist —  just  because  he  is  class  conscious  — 
seeks,  not  to  create  class  antagonisms,  but  to 
put  an  end  to  class  antagonisms  already  ex- 
isting; not  to  make  the  wageworker  hate  the 
capitalist,  but  to  teach  him  not  to  hate  the 
capitalist,  and  to  recognize  the  injustice  and 
the  folly  of  doing  so.  That  is  the  function 
of  class  consciousness  as  the  ablest  exponents 
of  the  doctrine  have  always  conceived  it,  and 
if  they  are  right  the  doctrine  is  not  immoral, 
but  essentially  moral;  not  a  foul  thing  to  be 
hated  and  abhorred  of  men,  but  a  truth  to 
be  welcomed,  and  its  value  to  a  democracy, 
in  which  the  forces  of  envy  and  passion  are 
so  easily  awakened,  is  incalculably  great. 

The  doctrine  of  class  consciousness  is  part 
of  the  class  struggle  theory,  which  is  the  very 
essence  of  the  Socialism  represented  by  the 
modern  political  Socialist  movement.  The 
supreme  aim  of  this  movement  is  not,  as  many 
people  suppose,  the  transfer  of  all  capital- 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

istically  owned  industry  to  the  control  of  a 
democratic  State.  That  is  not  the  end  aimed 
at,  the  final  goal,  but  rather  a  means  to  the 
end.  It  is  a  programme,  the  method  be- 
lieved to  be  best  adapted  to  the  attainment 
of  the  end  desired.  And  that  end,  it  cannot 
be  too  often  repeated,  is  to  do  away  with 
class  antagonism  altogether;  to  put  an  end  to 
the  exploitation  of  class  by  class,  and  thus 
to  end  once  and  forever  that  war  of  the 
classes  which  characterizes  modern  society. 
Failure  to  bear  this  in  mind,  confusion  of  the 
end  with  the  means  chosen  to  secure  its  re- 
alization, lies  at  the  root  of  most  of  the  mis- 
understandings of  the  Socialist  movement. 

The  class  struggle  theory  in  which  millions 
of  Socialists  believe,  and  upon  which  the  po- 
litical policies  of  all  the  Socialist  parties  of 
the  world  are  based,  is  very  simple.  It  was 
first  formulated  by  Karl  Marx  and  Friedrich 
Engels  in  their  celebrated  pamphlet,  The 
Communist  Manifesto,  in  1848.  Marx  and 
Engels  were  not  the  first  to  discern  the 
[H4] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

fact  that  class  antagonisms  exist.  That  had 
been  done  long  before,  especially  by  English 
and  French  writers  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  They  simply  discovered 
the  role  of  class  struggles  in  social  evolution. 
They  showed  that  class  struggles  had  ex- 
isted from  time  immemorial,  ever  since  the 
institution  of  private  property  was  evolved; 
that  history  is  in  the  main  a  record  of  class 
struggles.  They  pointed  out  that  the  great 
cardinal  epochs  of  human  history,  such  as  the 
development  from  slavery  to  feudalism,  and 
from  feudalism  to  capitalism,  were  possible 
only  through  the  rise  of  new  classes  wresting 
the  power  from  existing  ruling  classes, 
through  the  control  of  the  economic  re- 
sources most  vital  to  the  life  of  society.  That 
class  antagonisms  existed  before  Marx  and 
Engels  were  born,  and  were  clearly  recog- 
nized, is  evident  from  every  page  of  human 
history.  Those  who  think  that  the  class 
struggle  is  a  deliberate  creation  of  wicked 
agitators,  and  that  the  interests  of  the  capi- 
[US] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

talists  and  the  workers  are  naturally  identical, 
ought  to  read  the  writings  of  the  great  po- 
litical economists  —  Adam  Smith,  for  exam- 
ple. 


[116] 


Ill 


THE  theory  may  be  very  briefly  outlined 
as  follows:  Society  as  we  know  it  to- 
day is  the  resultant  of  uncounted  centur- 
ies of  evolution.  Our  economic  and  political 
institutions,  our  customs  and  laws,  are  not  in- 
ventions born  of  great  inspirations,  but  devel- 
opments resulting  from  human  experience  and 
effort.  The  greatest  force  in  the  evolutionary 
process  has  been  the  economic  needs  and  strug- 
gles of  the  race.  The  material  conditions  of 
life,  the  means  of  wealth  production,  have 
counted  for  most  among  all  the  forces  impell- 
ing progress.  "  Man  is  a  tool-using  animal," 
said  Aristotle,  and  we  may  add  that  man's 
history  is  essentially  the  history  of  his  tools. 
It  is  not  contended  that  only  economic  forces 
have  influenced  the  evolution  of  society. 
The  supporters  of  this  materialistic  interpre- 
tation of  history  do  not  deny  the  influence 
[117] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

of  ideals,  or  religion,  or  patriotism,  for  ex- 
ample: they  simply  urge  that  the  life  of  man 
has  its  roots  in  the  soil  of  economic  condi- 
tions. This,  in  brief,  is  the  view  of  history 
which  Marx  and  Engels  so  clearly  formu- 
lated more  than  sixty  years  ago. 

The  philosophy  of  Marxian  Socialism  rests 
upon  this  conception  of  the  economic  motivi- 
sation  of  historical  development.  While  the 
earlier  Socialist  ideologists  believed  that  the 
genius  of  some  inspired  individual  would  de- 
vise a  perfect  social  state,  the  advantages  of 
which  would  be  set  forth  with  convincing 
power,  also  by  some  inspired  genius,  the  mod- 
ern Marxian  Socialist  rests  implicitly  upon 
the  laws  of  evolution.  The  Socialist  state, 
he  believes,  will  be  —  indeed,  is  being  — 
evolved  from  the  existing  state  as  it  was 
evolved  from  earlier  forms  of  society. 

Socialism  is  not  a  theory  of  economic  fa- 
talism, however.  While  the  Socialist  be- 
lieves Socialism  to  be  inevitable,  he  does  not 
believe  that  the  change  will  come  about  re- 
gardless of  human  efforts  and  desires;  that 
[118] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

it  makes  no  difference  whether  we  want  So- 
cialism or  not,  whether  we  work  for  it  or 
against  it.  A  few  addle-pated  vendors  of 
half-digested  Marxian  ideas  may  so  represent 
the  "  inevitability  "  of  Socialism,  but  every 
Socialist  competent  to  speak  for  the  move- 
ment knows  that  such  notions  are  ridiculously 
absurd.  The  Socialist  state  will  not  come 
into  being  of  itself,  fully  developed,  through 
the  automatic  operation  of  economic  forces, 
without  the  agency  of  human  effort.  The 
very  fact  that  every  Socialist  is  a  propagan- 
dist, earnestly  seeking  to  convert  others  to  his 
faith,  proves  that  no  such  fatalistic  belief  in 
the  automatic  development  of  Socialism  is 
generally  held. 

What  is  meant  when  it  is  said  that  Social- 
ism is  inevitable,  that  it  must  come  as  a  re- 
sult of  economic  conditions,  is  that  economic 
conditions  will  make  the  change  to  Socialism 
inevitable  in  the  sense  that,  because  self- 
preservation  is  the  great  law  of  life,  and  be- 
cause the  economic  interest  is  primal  and 
fundamental,  men  and  women  will  be  forced 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

to  see  in  Socialism  their  only  hope  and  op- 
portunity for  self-preservation. 

"  Man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone,"  and 
it  would  be  the  height  of  folly  seriously  to 
contend,  as  some  few  misguided  zealots  have 
done  from  time  to  time,  that  individuals  are 
never  actuated  by  other  than  economic  mo- 
tives. The  splendid  idealism  and  the  heroic 
self-sacrifice  of  many  of  the  greatest  leaders 
in  the  Socialist  movement,  and  of  its  rank 
and  file,  prove  that  such  a  view  is  preposter- 
ous. Under  the  spell  of  a  great  ideal  or  pas- 
sion, individuals  have  time  and  again  sacri- 
ficed every  economic  interest,  and  even  life 
itself.  Still,  it  remains  a  fact  that  bread  is 
essential  to  life,  and  that  the  preservation  of 
life  is  the  strongest  instinct  in  all  animals, 
man  included. 

In  every  epoch  of  history,  ever  since  pri- 
vate property  first  became  the  dominant  eco- 
nomic characteristic  of  human  society,  there 
have  been  class  divisions  and  class  conflicts. 
Master  and  slave  might  have,  and  often  did 
have,  many  interests  in  common,  but  in  their 

[  120] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

special  relation  as  master  and  slave  there  was 
no  bond  of  common  interest.  Similarly,  the 
modern  wageworker,  whose  condition  is  a 
form  of  slavery,  as  Herbert  Spencer  has 
very  clearly  shown,  may  have  many  interests 
in  common  with  his  employer,  but  in  the  spe- 
cial relation  of  wageworker  and  wage-paying 
employer  there  is  no  commonality  of  interest. 
If  both  are  Jews  they  may  have  a  common 
interest  in  protecting  their  race  against  anti- 
semitic  agitations ;  if  both  are  prohibitionists, 
they  may  find  a  common  interest  in  the  war 
against  the  saloon;  if  both  are  victims  of 
civic  mismanagement  they  may  have  a  com- 
mon interest  in  securing  a  change  in  the  city 
government.  And  any  of  these  interests 
may  prove  strong  enough  to  compel  both  to 
disregard,  for  the  time  at  least,  every  other 
interest. 

They  may  even  have  a  common  industrial 
interest.  If,  for  example,  it  is  proposed  to 
do  away  with  certain  industry  by  legislative 
enactment,  the  men  engaged  in  it  as  wage- 
workers  will  very  naturally  join  with  their 

[121]    J 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

employers  in  opposing  the  legislation,  mak- 
ing common  cause  with  their  exploiters  to  the 
exclusion  of  other  interests  which  form  the 
basis  of  the  antagonisms  which  characterize 
their  normal  relationship.  We  have  had 
admirable  examples  of  this  temporary  cessa- 
tion of  hostilities  and  union  upon  common  in- 
terests in  the  manner  in  which  the  workers  in 
the  brewing  industry  have  joined  their  em- 
ployers in  opposing  laws  for  the  prohibition 
of  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  liquor  and  in 
the  similar  union  of  employers  and  employees 
upon  tariff  legislation. 

Normally,  however,  all  other  things  being 
equal,  separate  and  distinct  economic  inter- 
ests divide  the  workers  and  their  employers 
into  hostile  classes.  No  matter  what  group- 
ings may  take  place  outside  of  their  special 
relation  as  employers  and  employed,  within 
those  interests  they  become  hostile  classes. 
It  is  to  the  interest  of  every  employer  to  get 
as  much  profit  out  of  the  labor  of  the  men  he 
employs  as  possible;  it  is  equally  to  their  in- 

[122] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

terest  to  get  as  large  wages  as  possible,  a 
maximum  of  the  total  production.  All  this 
was  clearly  enough  demonstrated  by  Adam 
Smith  in  his  Wealth  of  Nations,  and  has 
never  been  seriously  questioned  by  any  econ- 
omist of  note.  Upon  no  other  basis  can  the 
constant  industrial  warfare  indicated  by 
strikes,  lockouts  and  boycotts,  trade  unions 
and  employers'  associations  be  explained. 

Modern  industrial  society  is  characterized 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  capitalistic;  that  all  pro- 
duction is  carried  on  for  profit  rather  than  for 
use.  The  motive  of  the  ordinary  manufac- 
turer is  not  the  production  of  simple  use- 
values.  He  is  interested  only  in  producing 
social  use-values,  things  to  be  sold  at  a  profit. 
He  would  as  soon  manufacture  coffins  as  cra- 
dles, idols  for  heathens  as  prayer  books  for 
Christians,  provided  only  that  equal  profits 
might  be  made.  We  have  a  class  —  numer- 
ically large,  but  relatively  small  —  owning 
and  controlling  the  great  agencies  of  wealth 
production  and  distribution,  and  a  vastly 
[123] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

larger  class,  which,  not  owning  the  great 
agencies  of  wealth  production,  must  work  for 
wages.  This  class,  it  is  evident,  must  pro- 
duce a  surplus-value  over  and  above  the 
amount  it  receives  in  wages  if  the  "  silent 
partners,"  the  investors  of  capital,  are  to  re- 
ceive anything  in  the  shape  of  interest  upon 
their  invested  capital. 

This  surplus-value  is  the  bone  of  conten- 
tion, the  casus  belli,  of  the  great  industrial 
conflict.  And  so  long  as  the  capitalist 
method  of  production  prevails  that  conflict 
must  continue.  If  all  men  were  angels  or 
saints,  it  is  conceivable  that  they  might  agree 
perfectly  as  to  the  division  of  both  labor  and 
wealth.  The  harmony  might  be  as  perfect 
as  the  National  Civic  Federation  professes 
to  desire.  It  might  then  be  possible  for  the 
workers  and  the  capitalists  so  to  agree  that 
each  class  should  render  the  other  equal  recip- 
rocal service,  and  that  the  wealth  should  be 
equitably  shared.  But  since  men  are  neither 
angels  nor  saints,  and  perfection  is  not,  and 
has  never  been,  a  human  attribute,  that  har- 
[124] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

mony  does  not  and  cannot  exist.  Instead  of 
harmony  we  have  a  constant  struggle ;  unions 
of  workers  and  unions  of  employers  face  each 
other  in  a  great  conflict. 


I  125  ] 


IV 


NOW,  while  this  struggle  of  the  two 
classes  is  the  most  obvious  feature  of 
our  social  and  political  life,  dominat- 
ing, to  a  large  extent,  our  legislation  and  poli- 
tics, \t  is  foolish  to  contend,  as  many  Socialist 
writers  have  done,  that  a  clear  line  of  cleavage 
runs  through  modern  society,  all  the  capitalist 
goats  being  arrayed  on  one  side  of  it,  and  all 
the  proletarian  sheep  upon  the  other  —  these 
two  groups  including  the  entire  popula- 
tion. This  crude  concept  of  the  class  group- 
ings in  capitalist  society  has  been  sadly  prev- 
alent in  the  popular  literature  of  Socialism, 
and  it  is  probably  responsible  for  some  of  the 
disrepute  in  which  the  class  struggle  theory 
is  held. 

Here  is  a  man  who  is  a  wageworker,  em- 
ployed in  one  of  our  great  factories.     About 
his  status  there  would  seem  to  be  no  room  for 
[126] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

doubt.  He  is  a  wageworker.  But  we  dis- 
cover that  he  has  inherited,  or  perhaps  saved, 
a  thousand  dollars,  which  he  has  invested  in 
railroad  stock.  How  shall  we  classify  him 
now?  He  is  surely,  to  the  limited  extent  of 
his  investment,  a  capitalist,  and  is  just  as  anx- 
ious to  get  large  returns  upon  his  invested 
capital  as  the  millionaire  investor.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  a  wage-earner,  he  may  be  quite 
as  anxious  as  any  of  his  fellows  to  get  high 
wages  and  be  exploited  as  little  as  possible. 

Again :  Here  is  a  physician.  He  has  no 
capital  invested,  and  his  only  source  of  in- 
come is  the  practice  of  his  profession.  He 
is  not  conscious  of  any  affiliation  with  either 
of  the  two  classes  under  discussion.  If  asked 
about  it  he  would  say  that  he  belongs  to  a 
"  middle  class,"  a  class  equally  distinct  from 
the  capitalist  and  the  proletariat.  But  if  you 
only  recognize  two  classes  where  will  you 
place  him  —  with  the  capitalists  or  with  the 
workers?  Surely  not  with  the  capitalists 
(bearing  in  mind  that  he  does  not  exploit  the 
workers,  having  no  capital  invested),  and 
[127] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

equally  surely  not  with  the  proletariat  (bear- 
ing in  mind  that  he  is  not  exploited,  and  that 
his  income  is  perhaps  several  times  larger 
than  that  of  the  best  paid  wageworkers) . 
Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  many  other 
professional  men  i —  clergymen,  artists,  writ- 
ers, and  so  on. 

Or,  yet  again,  take  the  case  of  the  small 
employer,  the  man  who  works  quite  as  hard 
as  the  man  he  employs,  and  alongside  of 
him.  His  income  is  little  or  none  at  alj 
higher  than  that  of  the  man  he  employs. 
True,  he  is  an  employer  and  a  capitalist,  but 
he  is  much  more  of  a  proletarian  in  his  sym- 
pathies than  many  a  salaried  employee,  even 
though  the  latter  may  be  directly  exploited 
quite  as  surely  —  though  perhaps  to  a  less 
degree  —  as  the  ordinary  manual  worker.  It 
is  very  evident  that  if  we  are  to  insist  upon 
such  a  classification  as  will  include  in  one 
class  only  those  who  are  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  word  proletarians,  all  others  being  ar- 
rayed in  another  class  against  them,  the  pro- 
letarians cannot  hope  to  win  by  political 
[128] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

methods,  since  they  must  be  hopelessly  out- 
numbered and  outvoted. 

Karl  Marx  died  leaving  the  second  and 
third  volumes  of  Das  Kapital  unfinished. 
The  manuscript  of  the  third  volume  ends  at 
the  beginning  of  a  chapter  which  he  had  in- 
tended to  devote  to  class  groupings.  It  is 
more  than  probable  that  had  he  lived  to  com- 
plete that  chapter  we  should  have  been  saved 
from  a  great  many  of  those  crude  expositions 
of  the  class  struggle  theory  which  remind  one 
so  forcibly  of  the  naivete  of  that  Czar  of  Rus- 
sia who  drew  a  straight  line  across  the  map 
when  asked  to  indicate  the  course  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  a  railroad  that  was  to  be  built. 
Marx  was  far  too  wise  and  acute  a  thinker 
not  to  realize  that  to  range  the  actual  prole- 
tariat against  all  the  rest  of  the  people  would 
be  equivalent  to  proclaiming  the  hopelessness 
of  their  political  struggle. 

He  knew  very  well  that  outside  of  the 

ranks  of  the  actual  proletariat  there  are  many 

who   will   naturally   join    it   in    its    struggle 

against  the  capitalist  class.     Some  because, 

[  129] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

while  they  are  not  actually  of  the  proletariat, 
such  as  the  small  dealers,  tenant  farmers, 
petty  manufacturers,  and  so  on,  they  feel  that 
their  interests  draw  them  closer  to  the  prole- 
tariat than  to  the  capitalist  class.  They  are 
oppressed  and  exploited  by  the  great  capital- 
ist combinations  as  surely  as  the  proletariat 
is,  though  in  other  ways.  Therefore,  in  fur- 
therance of  their  economic  interests,  they 
are  driven  into  union  with  the  proletariat. 
Then  there  are  others  —  a  very  large  class, 
in  fact  —  who,  while  they  do  not  feel  that 
their  economic  interests  are  such  as  to  ally 
them  with  either  of  the  two  contending 
classes,  feel  the  justice  of  the  workers'  cause, 
or  recognize  the  stern  facts  of  the  historical 
movement,  and  so  unite  with  the  workers 
against  the  capitalists  in  the  political  arena. 
Finally,  there  are  some,  even  within  the  capi- 
talist class  itself,  who  are  just  enough  and 
humane  enough  to  see  that  the  workers'  cause 
is  righteous,  or  wise  enough  to  see  that  their 
triumph  is  inevitable. 

Probably  the  view  expressed  by  that  great 
[  130] 


The    Substance    of   Socialism 

man,  Wilhelm  Liebknecht,  the  most  astute  po- 
litical leader  the  Socialist  movement  has  yet 
produced,  comes  nearer  than  any  other  to  the 
thought  of  Marx,  his  friend  and  master.  On 
the  first  anniversary  of  Liebknecht's  death  the 
Berlin  Vorvuarts,  the  leading,  daily  newspaper 
of  the  German  Social  Democracy,  published 
some  fragments  of  an  unfinished  work  by 
Liebknecht,  the  manuscript  of  which  had  been 
found  among  his  papers.  Emphasis  is  laid 
in  these  posthumously  published  fragments 
upon  the  fact  that  "  the  number  of  those 
whose  interest  forces  them  into  the  ranks  of 
our  enemies  is  so  small  that  it  is  becoming 
almost  negligible,  and  that  the  immense  ma- 
jority of  those  who  have  a  hostile,  or  at  least 
hardly  a  friendly  attitude  toward  us,  take  this 
position  only  through  ignorance  of  their  own 
situation  and  of  our  efforts,  and  that  we  ought 
to  exert  all  our  strength  to  enlighten  this  ma- 
jority and  win  it  over." 

Liebknecht  is  very  generous  in  his  definition 
of  the  working  class:  "We  must  not  limit 
our  conception  of  the  term  '  working  class  ' 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

too  narrowly.  As  we  have  explained  in 
speeches,  tracts,  and  articles,  we  include  in 
the  working  class  all  who  live  exclusively  or 
principally  by  means  of  their  own  labor,  and 
who  do  not  grow  rich  through  the  work  of 
others. 

"  Thus,  besides  the  wage-earners,  we 
should  include  in  the  working  class  the  small 
farmers  and  small  shopkeepers,  who  tend 
more  and  more  to  drop  to  the  level  of  the 
proletariat  —  in  other  words,  all  those  who 
suffer  from  our  present  system  of  production 
on  a  large  scale. 

"  Some  maintain,  it  is  true,  that  the  wage- 
earning  proletariat  is  the  only  really  revolu- 
tionary class,  that  it  alone  forms  the  Socialist 
army,  and  that  we  ought  to  regard  with  sus- 
picion all  adherents  belonging  to  other  classes 
or  other  conditions  of  life.  Fortunately 
these  senseless  ideas  have  never  taken  hold  of 
the  German  Social  Democracy. 

"  The  wage-earning  class  is  most  directly 
affected  by  capitalist  exploitation;  it  stands 
face  to  face  with  those  who  exploit  it,  and 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

it  has  the  especial  advantage  of  being  concen- 
trated in  the  factories  and  yards,  so  that  it  is 
naturally  led  to  think  things  out  more  ener- 
getically and  finds  itself  automatically  organ- 
ized into  *  Battalions  of  workers.'  This  state 
of  things  gives  it  a  revolutionary  character 
which  no  other  part  of  society  has  to  the  same 
degree.  We  must  recognize  this  frankly. 

"  Every  wage-earner  is  either  a  Socialist 
already,  or  on  the  highroad  to  becoming  one. 
The  wage-earners  of  the  national  workshops 
in  France,  whom  the  middle  class  government 
of  the  February  Republic  wished  to  make  use 
of  against  the  Social  proletariat,  went  over 
to  the  enemy  at  the  crucial  moment.  In  the 
same  way  we  see  how  those  trades  unions  that 
were  started  by  the  agents  of  the  German 
middle-class  to  oppose  the  Socialist  workmen, 
either  have  maintained  only  the  shadow  of  an 
existence  or  have  in  their  turn  been  swept  into 
the  current  of  Socialist  ideas.  The  wage- 
earner  is  led  toward  Socialism  by  all  his  sur- 
roundings, by  all  the  conditions  in  which  he 
finds  himself.  He  is  forced  to  think  by  the 
[  133] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

very  conditions  of  his  life,  and  as  soon  as  he 
thinks  he  becomes  a  Socialist. 

"  But  if  the  wage-earner  suffers  more  di- 
rectly and  visibly  under  the  system  of  capital- 
ist exploitation,  the  small  farmers  and  shop- 
keepers are  as  truly  affected  by  it,  although 
in  a  less  direct  and  obvious  manner. 

"  The  unhappy  situation  of  the  small  farm- 
ers almost  all  over  Germany  is  as  well  known 
as  the  artisan  movement.  It  is  true  that 
both  small  farmers  and  small  shopkeepers 
are  still  in  the  camp  of  our  adversaries, 
but  only  because  they  do  not  understand  the 
profound  causes  that  underlie  their  deplora- 
ble condition;  it  is  of  prime  importance  for 
our  party  to  enlighten  them  and  bring  them 
over  to  our  side.  This  is  a  vital  question 
for  our  party,  because  these  two  classes  form 
the  majority  of  the  nation. 

"  The  German  Socialists  .  .  .  have 
long  understood  the  importance  of  propa- 
ganda and  the  necessity  of  winning  over  the 
small  shopkeeping  class  and  the  small  farm- 
ers. 

[134] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

"  A  tiny  minority  alone  demands  that  the 
Socialist  movement  shall  be  limited  to  the 
wage-earning  class. 


"  The  hyper-revolutionary  dress-parade 
Socialism,  that  addresses  itself  exclusively  to 
'  the  horny-handed  sons  of  toil '  has  two  ad- 
vantages for  the  reaction.  First,  it  limits  the 
Socialist  movement  to  a  class  that  in  Ger- 
many at  least  is  not  large  enough  to  bring 
about  a  revolution;  and  besides  this,  it  is  an 
excellent  way  of  frightening  the  main  body 
of  the  people  who  are  half  indifferent,  es- 
pecially the  peasants  and  the  petty  bour- 
geoisie, who  have  not  yet  organized  any  in- 
dependent political  activity. 

****** 

"  We  ought  not  to  ask,  Are  you  a  wage- 
earner?'  but  'Are  you  a  Socialist?' 

"  //  it  is  limited  to  the  wage-earners,  So- 
cialism cannot  conquer.  If  it  includes  all  the 
workers  and  the  moral  and  intellectual  elite 
of  the  nation,  its  victory  is  certain." 

[I35J 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

Later  on  Liebknecht  still  further  empha- 
sizes his  position  by  declaring  that  the  Social 
Democracy  is  "  the  party  of  all  the  people 
with  the  exception  of  two  hundred  thousand 
great  proprietors,  small  proprietors,  and 
priests." 

It  would  be  exceedingly  disingenuous  for 
me  to  suggest  that  Liebknecht's  fine  utterance 
is  thoroughly  representative  of  Socialist  ut- 
terances upon  the  subject.  The  extremist 
view  —  which  would  so  effectually  limit  the 
Socialist  movement  to  the  dimensions  of  a 
mere  sect  —  has  been  more  generally  pro- 
claimed in  America  probably  than  in  any 
other  country.  There  are  historical  reasons 
for  this,  reasons  inhering  in  the  development 
of  American  Socialism,  into  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  enter  here.  But  —  and  this  fact 
is  of  prime  importance  —  despite  all  the  ex- 
tremist utterances  upon  the  subject,  the  ac- 
tual movement,  in  its  policies,  has  followed 
the  line  of  Liebknecht's  reasoning.  This  is 
shown  by  the  great  strength  of  the  party  in 
such  states  as  Oklahoma,  by  the  relatively 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

large  number  of  professional  men  and  small 
shopkeepers  in  the  Socialist  party,  and  by  the 
propaganda  that  is  carried  on  in  the  colleges 
and  universities. 


[137] 


IT  is  evident  that  the  class  struggle  is  not  an 
artificial  product  of  the  passion  roused  by 
reckless  and  embittered  agitators  preach- 
ing social  discontent,  but  it  grows  inevitably 
out  of  harsh  and  inequitable  economic  condi- 
tions. To  blame  the  Socialist  agitator  for 
talking  of  the  class  struggle,  and  to  regard 
him  as  being  in  some  way  responsible  for  its 
existence,  is  foolish  in  the  extreme.  Agita- 
tors do  not  create  class  antagonisms  and  social 
unrest ;  at  most  they  are  but  the  voices  of  ex- 
isting deep-seated  discontent. 

How  foolish  it  is  to  condemn  the  men  and 
women  who  point  to  the  existence  of  the  class 
struggle  in  modern  society  may  be  aptly  illus- 
trated by  an  analogue.  Suppose  a  man  leav- 
ing his  home  in  the  morning  to  go  to  his 
work;  just  as  he  has  reached  the  street,  his 
wife  calls  him  back  and  says,  "  John,  do  you 
[138] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

not  see  that  it  is  beginning  to  rain,  and  that 
the  heavy  clouds  betoken  an  approaching 
storm?  Be  wise;  put  on  an  overcoat  and 
overshoes  and  take  an  umbrella  with  you  and 
so  protect  yourself  against  taking  cold." 
And  suppose,  further,  that  the  man  should 
turn  in  anger  and  scold  his  wife,  saying, 
"  You  are  a  dangerous,  wicked  woman;  you 
are  a  most  undesirable  person.  Why  do  you 
not  keep  quiet?  Instead  of  leaving  well 
enough  alone,  you  are  always  trying  to  create 
storms."  Such  a  man  would  be  quite  as  wise 
as  are  those  who  accuse  the  Socialists  of  cre- 
ating class  strife.  The  Socialist  no  more  cre- 
ates the  class  conflict  than  the  thoughtful  wife 
creates  the  rain.  He  is  in  the  position  of  one 
who  gives  the  workers  warning  of  the  storm, 
and  urges  them  to  prepare  for  it  —  to  equip 
themselves  with  overcoats,  overshoes  and  um- 
brellas, so  to  speak. 

The  war  of  the  classes  is  a  fact.     Those 

who  seek  to  deny  its  existence  simply  emulate 

the  stupid  ostrich,  which  ignorantly  hides  its 

head  in  the  sand  to  avoid  the  sight  of  the 

[139] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

danger  that  threatens  its  life.  The  fact  that 
it  does  not  see  the  hunter  when  its  head  is 
buried  in  the  sand  does  not  save  the  poor 
creature  from  its  fate,  nor  does  the  fact  that 
some  men  vociferously  deny  the  existence  of 
the  class  struggle  alter  the  fact  that  it  exists 
or  save  the  workers  from  the  suffering  it  in- 
volves. Nelson's  action  in  placing  the  tele- 
scope to  his  blind  eye  and  saying,  "  I  can  see 
no  danger,"  was  an  admirable  bit  of  bravado, 
but  the  danger  was  none  the  less  real  because 
he  refused  to  see  it. 

It  will  be  observed  from  the  foregoing  that 
this  is  not  at  all  a  moral  question.  There  is 
not  the  slightest  suggestion  that  the  struggle 
takes  form  of  proletarian  virtue  against  cap- 
italistic vice.  Both  classes  are  motived  by 
their  self-interest,  and  if  the  worker  and  the 
capitalist  could  change  places  each  would 
act  about  as  the  other  now  acts.  Infinite  mis- 
chief has  been  wrought  in  the  past  by  giving 
the  struggle  the  aspect  of  a  fight  between 
wicked  capitalists  and  virtuous  workers.  Who 
is  there  that  is  not  familiar  with  that  melo- 
[140] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

dramatic  conception?  It  is  one  of  the  great- 
est merits  of  Marx's  doctrine  of  the  class 
struggle  that  it  guards  the  workers  against 
that  mischief.  The  philosophy  of  the  class 
struggle  enables  the  worker  to  see  that  the 
employer  is  no  more  responsible  for  condi- 
tions than  himself.  He  sees  that  hatred  of 
the  capitalists,  either  individually  or  collect- 
ively, is  at  once  futile,  foolish,  and  unjust. 

He  understands  that  the  system  of  produc- 
tion for  profit  is  the  result  of  centuries  of  evo- 
lution ;  that  so  long  as  we  have  production  for 
profit  we  shall  have  one  class  owning  the 
means  of  life  and  subjecting  another  class  to 
its  rule.  He  learns  that  as  the  great  epochs 
of  human  history  have  been  ushered  in  by 
the  victory  of  classes  over  oppressing  classes, 
the  class  to  which  he  belongs  has  a  historic 
mission  to  fulfill;  that  the  only  effective  re- 
lief for  his  class  that  is  possible  must  come 
from  the  action  of  the  class  itself  exerting  its 
powers  to  destroy  the  power  of  the  capitalist 
class  to  exploit  it.  That  can  only  be  done  by 
abolishing  production  for  profit;  by  making 

[HI] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

the  great  agencies  of  production  upon  which 
all  depend  subject  to  the  common  control 
which  belongs  to  common  ownership.  If 
that  end  be  attained,  it  is  obvious,  class  own- 
ership disappears  and  is  supplanted  by  com- 
mon ownership,  and  class  rule  disappears  with 
class  ownership;  there  can  be  no  class  antag- 
onisms in  society  when  class  ownership  has 
disappeared.  The  workers  cannot  become 
class  conscious  —  conscious,  that  is,  of  the  se- 
cret of  the  exploitation  of  their  class,  and 
of  the  historic  mission  and  function  of  their 
class  —  without  getting  the  inspiration  of  the 
great  dream  of  a  world  without  class  antag- 
onisms, in  which  the  interest  of  each  shall  be 
the  interest  of  all.  Surely  that  is  a  spiritual 
attribute  of  the  doctrine  of  class  conscious- 
ness worthy  to  be  reckoned  I 

When  we  have  grasped  the  fact  that  the 
Socialists  do  not  make  the  class  struggle,  but 
simply  recognize  it  as  an  inherent  feature  of 
our  social  life,  resulting  from  the  nature  of 
our  economic  system,  it  becomes  fairly  obvi- 
ous that  much  of  the  criticism  to  which  they 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

are  subjected  is  unjust  and  based  upon  en- 
tirely false  premises.  It  would  be  quite  as 
reasonable  and  just  to  blame  the  physician 
for  the  existence  of  the  disease  he  discovers  in 
the  patient  as  to  blame  the  Socialist  for  rec- 
ognizing the  class  antagonisms  in  society.  Of 
course,  if  the  Socialists  gloated  over  the  class 
struggle,  if  they  rejoiced  in  its  existence  and 
desired  its  perpetuation,  they  would  justly  de- 
serve condemnation. 

But  the  recognition  of  an  evil  by  no  means 
implies  approval  of  it.  The  physician  does 
not  desire  the  continuance  of  the  disease  he 
discerns  in  the  patient,  but  its  eradication. 
The  sanitarian  who  directs  attention  to  a  dan- 
gerous plague  spot  is  not  condemned  and  ac- 
cused of  desiring  to  maintain  it.  We  know 
that  the  frank  recognition  of  the  disease  and 
the  plague  spot  is  a  necessary  condition  to 
their  removal.  It  is  to  the  great  credit  of 
the  Socialists  that  they  are  striving,  in  the 
face  of  difficulties  of  colossal  magnitude,  to 
bring  about  the  changes  in  our  economic  sys- 
tem which  they  believe  will  put  an  end  to  class 
[143] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

divisions  and  struggles.  It  is  part  of  the  So- 
cialist indictment  of  capitalist  society  that  by 
its  very  nature  it  divides  into  hostile  classes 
instead  of  uniting  in  bonds  of  common  social 
interest.  It  is  part  of  its  splendid  inspira- 
tion to  millions  of  men  and  women  in  all 
lands  that  the  Socialist  ideal  comprehends  a 
world  free  from  class  strife,  welded  into 
glorious  solidarity  and  brotherhood. 


[H4] 


VI 


IT  is  true  that  Socialist  agitators  are  con- 
stantly trying  to  rouse  the  workers  to  class 
consciousness.  That  is  to  say,  the  Social- 
ist propaganda  aims  at  uniting  the  workers 
upon  the  basis  of  their  class  interests.  For 
this  they  are  bitterly  condemned  by  many  sin- 
cere and  thoughtful  persons.  "  Why  is  it  nec- 
essary," they  ask,  "  to  carry  on  an  agitation 
for  the  purpose  of  rousing  the  workers?  If 
the  class  struggle  is  an  elemental  fact  of  our 
social  life,  produced  naturally  and  inevitably 
by  the  fundamental  economic  relations,  surely 
the  workers  must  already  be  only  too  pain- 
fully aware  of  the  fact  that  the  struggle  ex- 
ists, and  of  its  nature.  What  need,  then,  of 
a  special  propaganda  to  make  known  the 
obvious?  Why  not  lay  all  the  emphasis  of 
the  propaganda  for  Socialism  upon  remedial 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

measures,  rather  than  upon  morbid  diagnosis 
and  analysis  of  existing  conditions?  " 

The  critical  attitude  thus  indicated  is  very 
common,  and  its  honest  questioning  must  be 
as  honestly  met.  In  the  first  place,  it  may  be 
said  in  reply  that  no  effective  advocacy  of 
remedial  measures  is  possible,  or  even  con- 
ceivable, which  does  not  lay  stress  upon  the 
nature  and  the  magnitude  of  the  evils  for 
which  remedy  is  desired.  Just  as  the  sani- 
tarian, in  order  to  induce  the  citizens  to  take 
the  necessary  steps  to  remove  a  plague  spot, 
must  insist  upon  the  extent  of  the  danger  and 
peril  it  involves,  so  the  Socialist,  in  order  to 
induce  men  and  women  to  work  for  the  re- 
moval of  the  ills  and  perils  of  class  rule,  must 
dwell  constantly  upon  the  nature  and  magni- 
tude of  those  ills  and  perils.  It  is  not  from 
any  desire  to  indulge  in  morbid  and  sensa- 
tional discussion,  nor  from  love  of  alarmist 
agitation,  that  the  Socialists  dwell  so  much 
upon  the  facts  of  the  class  warfare  in  society, 
but  because  there  is  no  other  way  by  means 
of  which  they  can  rouse  and  enlist  the  moral 
[146] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

passion  requisite  for  the  attainment  of  their 
ideal. 

But  that  is  not  all.  There  is  a  yet 
weightier  and  profounder  reason.  Not  all  en- 
gaged in  the  social  struggle,  even  its  worst 
victims,  are  conscious  of  the  nature  of  the 
struggle.  To  borrow  yet  another  illustra- 
tion from  pathology,  the  physician  finds  his 
patient  weak  and  ill,  suffering  from  the  dread 
consumption.  Suffering,  the  patient  is  under 
the  delusion  that  he  has  only  a  severe  cold 
with  cough.  Because  he  is  under  that  de- 
lusion, he  hopes  to  cure  himself  by  the  use 
of  patent  cough  remedies  and  other  quack- 
eries, a  fatally  foolish  thing.  The  wise  phy- 
sician knows  that  he  can  do  nothing  effective 
until  he  has  disabused  the  mind  of  his  patient 
of  this  dangerous  delusion,  made  him  realize 
the  nature  of  his  illness,  and  the  folly  and 
worse  than  folly  of  dependence  upon  quack 
nostrums.  Consciousness  of  his  condition  is 
necessary  to  the  patient  in  order  that  he  may 
intelligently  cooperate  with  his  physician.  In 
like  manner  it  is  necessary  to  educate  the 

[  147  ] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

workers  to  a  consciousness  of  their  class,  of 
its  position,  of  its  wrongs,  of  its  powers. 

Many  of  the  workers  who  suffer  most  from 
the  ills  of  our  social  system  are  in  a  position 
similar  to  that  of  the  deluded  patient.  They 
are  not  conscious  of  the  real  nature  of  their 
trouble,  and  are  the  pathetic  victims  of  all 
kinds  of  social  quackery.  Just  as  the  poor 
sufferer  from  consumption  gets  the  flaunting 
advertisements  of  dangerous  nostrums  thrust 
constantly  before  him,  so  the  worker  gets  the 
cheap  and  nasty  nostrums  of  a  multitude  of 
social  quacks  thrust  before  him.  For  exam- 
ple, he  is  told  from  the  pulpit  and  from  po- 
litical platforms  that  there  are  no  classes  in 
America,  until  he  is  persuaded  that  it  is  so. 
By  the  persistent  preaching  of  would-be-mor- 
alists and  professional  reformers,  he  is  made 
to  believe  that  the  whole  social  problem  is 
one  of  moral  failings  merely;  that  it  is  not  a 
question  of  class  arrayed  against  class,  but  of 
man  against  man.  He  is  persuaded  that  the 
social  evils  which  impose  so  much  suffering 
upon  him  and  his  fellows  spring  from  the 
[148] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

wickedness  of  men;  that  it  is  all  a  question 
of  wickedness  and  greed ;  of  there  being  more 
bad  men  than  good  ones  in  control  of  the 
great  powers  of  life. 

This  is  the  doctrine  which  Mr.  Roosevelt 
has  so  powerfully  and  consistently  preached, 
a  doctrine  which  has  always  seemed  to  me  to 
be  revolting  in  its  immorality,  and  fraught 
with  the  possibilities  of  terrible  disaster  to 
the  nation.  It  is  social  quackery  in  its  worst 
and  most  dangerous  form.  That  the  preach- 
ers of  such  a  doctrine,  which  is  essentially  im- 
moral and  subversive  of  all  social  order, 
should  have  the  effrontery  to  accuse  the  So- 
cialists of  preaching  "  foul  "  and  "  immoral  " 
doctrines  is  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the 
potency  of  class  interests  to  blunt  the  moral 
senses  and  warp  the  mental  vision. 


[149] 


VII 

I  KNOW  that  these  are  terrible  words,  but 
they  are  terribly  true.  And  the  time  has 
come  when  the  truth  must  be  spoken. 
Therefore  I  dare  assert  that  every  preacher 
of  the  Rooseveltian  doctrine  which  is  here  out- 
lined is  preaching  a  dangerously  immoral  doc- 
trine, a  doctrine  which,  if  it  ever  takes  hold  of 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  proletariat  of 
America,  will  lead  to  such  a  reign  of  anarchy 
and  terror  as  no  democracy  can  ever  with- 
stand. No  Anarchist  ever  preached  a  doc- 
trine so  well  calculated  to  let  down  the  flood- 
gates of  envy  and  hate. 

If  this  verdict  seems  too  strong  and  sweep- 
ing, let  me  ask  you  to  apply  to  it  a  very  prac- 
tical test.  Here  is  a  laborer;  he  is  out  of 
work,  poor,  miserable  and  helpless.  All  his 
life  long  he  has  lived  in  poverty,  and  suffered 
the  pains  of  the  struggle  which  are  the  herit- 
[ISO] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

age  of  his  class.  The  black  shadow  of  pov- 
erty rested  over  his  cradle  in  infancy,  and 
darkened  the  pathway  of  his  childhood,  fill- 
ing it  with  terror.  When  he  ought  to  have 
been  enjoying  childhood's  right  to  play  he 
was  obliged  to  work  in  a  mill,  to  bear  upon 
his  undeveloped  shoulders  the  heavy  yoke  of 
toil;  to  breathe  and  move  to  the  time  set  by 
a  soulless  machine.  Now,  from  no  fault  of 
his  own,  but  simply  because  of  an  ill-working 
social  system,  he  is  without  work  and  without 
the  means  of  obtaining  bread  for  himself  and 
his  family.  In  his  ears  from  early  dawn 
till  night  brings  exhaustion  and  forgetfulness 
there  rings  the  cry  of  his  wife  and  baby  for 
bread,  for  life.  The  picture  is  not  over- 
drawn—  there  are  many  thousands  of  such 
men  in  our  great  cities. 

As  he  goes  forth  into  the  city  in  a  weary 
quest  for  bread  and  work  he  sees  confronting 
him  the  splendor  and  luxury  of  the  man  by 
whom  he  was  employed.  He  contrasts  his 
poverty  with  the  wealth  and  splendor,  and 
the  sinister  thought  is  born  within  him  that 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

he  was  robbed  of  his  fruits  of  his  toil  to  en- 
rich that  employer.  Not  as  a  result  of  any 
agitator's  appeals  to  his  envy,  but  as  the  bit- 
ter fruitage  of  his  hard  life,  he  has  come  to 
regard  the  rich  employer  as  the  robber  by 
whom  he  has  been  despoiled.  Let  there  be 
no  mistake  about  this:  the  natural  state  of 
mind  for  such  a  man  as  the  one  described  is 
hatred  and  envy  of  the  rich  and  powerful. 
It  is  an  instinctive  attitude:  agitators  can  do 
no  more  than  fan  the  flames  of  passion  into 
fury. 

Now,  go  to  that  man  with  this  gospel  of 
"  individual  morality,"  of  which  we  have 
heard  so  much  from  our  professional  reform- 
ers in  high  places.  Teach  him  that  his  suf- 
ferings are  due  to  the  misdeeds  of  individ- 
uals, of  "  malefactors  of  great  wealth." 
Teach  him  with  all  the  authority  of  Church 
and  State  that  he  and  his  loved  ones  endure 
the  pangs  of  hunger  and  hopeless  poverty  be- 
cause his  employer  is  not  a  just  man,  or  be- 
cause some  financier  has  the  instincts  of  a 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

brute  and  a  ghoul.  What  effect  can  you  ex- 
pect such  teaching  to  have  upon  his  mind, 
other  than  to  deepen  and  intensify  his  natural, 
instinctive  hatred  and  envy?  Have  you  not 
given  authority  and  sanction  to  his  worst  and 
most  dangerous  thoughts?  When  you  have 
made  him  believe  that  the  wickedness  of  indi- 
viduals has  brought  such  terrible  suffering 
upon  himself  and  those  he  loves,  will  you 
marvel  that  he  should  cherish  in  his  heart 
bitter  hatred  of  the  individuals  whom  you 
have  taught  him  to  regard  as  responsible,  or 
that  the  bitter  feelings  should  lead  to  desper- 
ate deeds? 

Can  you  not  see  that  such  preaching  feeds 
the  most  dangerous  anarchy  the  world  has 
known?  That  it  kindles  fires  of  hatred 
which  may  at  any  time  burst  into  unrestrained 
fury  and  destroy  society?  No  frenzied  crea- 
ture, mad  with  the  sense  of  injustice  and 
filled  with  passion  for  revenge,  ever  yet  took 
the  law  into  his  own  hands,  grasping  torch 
or  knife  or  bomb  and  working  destruction, 

[153] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

who  was  not  the  victim  of  this  delusion  which 
the  opponents  of  Socialism  are  constantly 
preaching  in  the  name  of  "  morality  "  and 
"  good  order."  That  we  have  not  had  a 
reign  of  terror  in  consequence  of  the  constant 
preaching  of  this  Rooseveltian  doctrine,  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  its  preachers  have  not 
been  able  to  impress  the  masses  with  a  pas- 
sionate belief  in  it.  Yet  they  have  not  wholly 
failed;  we  have  not  altogether  escaped  its 
evil  consequences,  for  every  careful  observer 
must  have  observed  that,  as  a  result  of  the 
wild  denunciation  of  "  malefactors  of  great 
wealth,"  we  came  perilously  near  the  point 
where  an  appeal  to  popular  passion  against 
a  Rockefeller  or  a  Harriman  would  secure 
the  passage  of  almost  any  legislation,  how- 
ever defective  or  vicious. 

The  fact  is  that  the  capitalists  are  no  more 
to  blame  than  the  workers;  our  social  prob- 
lems are  not  due  to  the  machinations  of  a 
few  magnates,  who  must  therefore  be  singled 
out  as  "  malefactors,"  but  to  the  great  forces 
of  economic  development  which  condition  the 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

lives  of  us  all,  rich  and  poor  alike.  To 
preach  otherwise  is  to  preach  falsehood  in 
the  name  of  truth,  and  to  incite  red-handed 
anarchy. 


[155] 


VIII 

BUT  if  we  take  our  victim  of  the  social 
struggle  and  give  him  the  message  of 
Socialism,  he  is  soon  turned  from  the 
path  of  anarchy  and  hatred.  It  is  no  accident 
that  in  these  lands  where  Socialism  is  strongest 
Anarchism  is  weakest  and  that  recourse  to 
dagger  and  bomb  is  most  frequent  where  the 
Socialist  movement  is  weakest.  The  Socialist 
propaganda  reaches  such  a  victim  of  the  so- 
cial struggle  as  I  have  described  and  teaches 
him  at  the  very  outset  that  no  individual  is  to 
blame  for  conditions  so  terrible;  that  the 
evils  do  not  arise  from  the  wickedness  of  in- 
dividuals, but  from  great  social  causes  de- 
veloped by  centuries  of  evolution.  It  teaches 
him  that  the  capitalist  is  no  more  to  blame 
than  himself;  that  we  are  all  creatures  of  con- 
ditions. 

He  gets  from  the  Socialist  propaganda  a 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

new  view  of  the  social  problem.  He  sees  it 
as  it  is,  as  a  product  of  the  struggle  of  cen- 
turies. He  sees  that  his  old  hatred  of  the 
capitalist  was  wrong,  illogical  and  unjust. 
When  a  man  becomes  conscious  of  his  posi- 
tion as  a  member  of  the  working  class,  and 
understands  that  the  class  struggle  is  not  an 
artificial  thing  created  by  scheming  and 
wicked  men,  but  a  necessary  and  natural  con- 
dition of  the  existing  economic  order,  he  can 
no  longer  entertain  bitter  hatred  toward  the 
capitalist,  nor  harbor  desire  for  revenge.  In- 
stead of  a  passion  for  personal  revenge,  he 
becomes  mastered  by  a  sense  of  class  loyalty 
and  relies,  not  upon  individual  acts  of  vio- 
lence, but  upon  the  cooperation  of  his  fellows 
in  furtherance  of  their  class  interest.  And 
this  cooperation  of  the  working  class  is  not 
to  the  end  that  punishment  may  be  inflicted 
upon  the  members  of  the  present  ruling  class, 
but  that  the  economic  basis  of  society  be  so 
changed  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  classes 
to  exist. 

It  is  one  of  the  incomprehensible  marvels 

[157] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

of  our  time  that  so  few  of  the  critics  of  So- 
cialism see  this  very  obvious  truth.  Here 
we  have  a  great  world-wide  movement,  em- 
bracing many  millions  of  people  of  all  lands 
and  races,  taking  the  unlearned  and  blind  dis- 
content of  the  world,  teaching  it  and  guiding 
it  away  from  mad,  abortive  violence  into  the 
broad,  free  channels  of  patiently  organized 
political  effort,  and  the  critics  are  blind  to 
this  glorious  mission.  I  make  the  claim  for 
the  Socialist  movement  of  the  world  that  it 
is  the  one  great  conscious  agent  which  is 
teaching  the  wrongfulness  and  the  futility  of 
hatred  and  violence,  and  guiding  the  ever- 
growing discontent  of  the  disinherited  and 
despoiled  millions  into  channels  of  safe,  pa- 
tient, constructive  effort. 


IX 


IT  would  be  idle,  of  course,  to  deny  that 
class  consciousness  may  manifest  itself  in 
violent  uprisings.  In  countries  where,  as 
in  Russia,  for  example,  the  great  masses  of  the 
people  are  deprived  of  the  political  powers 
which  make  peaceful,  legal  action  possible, 
violent  rebellion  may  be  the  only  means  open 
to  them  in  their  struggle  for  freedom.  Bitter 
as  such  a  struggle  must  be,  terrible  as  its 
methods  must  be,  the  righteousness  of  such 
rebellion  can  scarcely  be  questioned  by  Anglo- 
Saxons. 

And  it  is  surely  better  that  there  should 
be  a  collective  struggle  for  freedom,  likely 
to  prove  successful  because  of  the  great  army 
of  fighters,  than  that  there  should  be  num- 
berless futile  and  abortive  acts  of  violence 
by  individuals.  In  lands  where  the  workers 
catf  use  the  ballot  to  redress  their  grievances 

[159] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

experience  shows  that  the  struggle  for  free- 
dom invariably  takes  the  form  of  a  political 
struggle.  For  us  in  America,  therefore,  the 
choice  is  between  individual  acts  of  violence 
and  collective  political  effort  along  legal,  con- 
stitutional channels.  The  former  is  the  log- 
ical outcome  of  the  philosophy  of  which  Mr. 
Roosevelt  has  been  a  most  conspicuous  ex- 
ponent; the  latter  of  the  philosophy  which 
guides  and  inspires  the  Socialist  movement. 

For  the  reasons  which  I  have  thus  briefly 
indicated  I  have  come  to  regard  the  Socialist 
teaching  of  class  consciousness  as  a  great  ethi- 
cal force  in  the  world,  of  incalculable  value. 
Where  the  doctrine  of  class  consciousness 
makes  headway,  there  abortive  acts  of  re- 
vengful  violence  are  rarest;  where  class  con- 
sciousness is  rare,  there  it  is  a  common  thing 
for  enraged  individuals  to  seek  revenge. 
The  greatest  safeguard  against  the  assassin's 
dagger  and  the  incendiary's  torch  is  the  bal- 
lot in  the  hands  of  class  conscious  working- 
men.  Class  consciousness  is  the  one  thing 
[160] 


The   Substance    of  Socialism 

that  can  save  the  nation  from  individual  re- 
volt, blind,  stupid  and  cruel. 

To  make  a  discontented  workingman  class 
conscious  is  to  make  him  a  safe  man,  whose 
revolt  is  always  against  the  system  and  never 
against  individuals;  it  is  to  make  him  a  just 
man,  too  wise  and  just  to  hold  individuals  re- 
sponsible for  the  evils  of  the  system;  it  is  to 
make  him  a  wise  and  patient  man,  too  wise  to 
attempt  to  make  things  better  by  venting  his 
personal  anger  in  savage  deeds,  patient 
enough  to  work  with  his  fellows  year  after 
year  to  bring  about  the  economic  changes 
which  will  make  freedom  possible  for  all 
mankind.  Finally,  to  make  a  workingman 
class  conscious  is  to  bring  hope  into  his  life, 
light  into  his  eyes  and  music  into  his  heart. 
It  is  to  hold  out  to  him  the  vision  of  millions 
of  his  fellows  uniting  with  himself,  establish- 
ing through  the  power  of  their  citizenship 
conditions  of  life  which  will  make  possible  the 
realization  of  human  brotherhood,  and  set  all 
men  free  to  live  lives  of  greater  purpose  and 
[161] 


The    Substance    of  Socialism 

beauty  than  we  have  seen  in  our  brightest  and 
holiest  dreams. 

For  that  the  prophets  lived  and  died.  For 
that  the  unconquerable  Human  Spirit  has 
struggled  and  suffered  through  the  uncounted 
ages.  For  that,  too,  the  brave  pioneers  went 
forth  into  the  forest  undaunted  and  laid  the 
foundations  of  this  great  Republic  and  freely 
gave  their  life  blood  to  cement  its  pillars. 


[162] 


KARL  MARX, 


HIS  LIFE  AND  WORK 
By  JOHN  SPARGO 

Every  library  should  possess  this  book,  which  is  not  only  a  history 
of  the  Socialist  movement  and  a  study  of  its  theory,  but  a  revelation 
of  the  personality  of  its  great  founder.  The  first  edition  was  sold 
quickly;  a  new  and  revised  edition  is  now  ready. 

Critics  of  every  political  complexion  praige  it 

"The  author  has  performed  a  needed  service  in  giving  us  so  excel- 
lent a  biography  of  a  man  whose  influence  has  extended  to  almost 
every  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth  and  under  whose  banner  are 
enrolled  something  like  ten  million  voters.  There  are  many  illustra- 
tions, and  the  fund  of  information  is  such  that  the  work  is  indis- 
pensable to  all  who  would  intelligently  oppose  or  enthusiastically  sup- 
port the  movement." — San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"John  Spargo  makes  the  surprising  statement  that  no  adequate  bi- 
ography of  the  great  socialist  has  been  written  in  any  language.  He 
tries  to  make  the  deficiency  good  in  this  book,  which  is  an  excellent 
example  of  what  a  biography  should  be.  It  is  a  book  that  will  prove 
instructive  to  all  who  are  called  upon  to  study  Socialism." — New 
York  Sun. 

"The  literature  of  Socialism  has  received  a  valuable  addition  in 
the  biography.  This  is  the  first  adequate  work  of  the  kind  that  has 
been  written  in  English." — The  Congregationalist. 

"Altogether  this  work  is  likely  to  be,  for  a  long  time  to  come,  the 
standard  authority  for  the  details  of  Karl  Marx's  outward  existence." 
— Joseph  Jacobs  in  New  York  Times. 

"The  volume  is  more  than  a  socialistic  appeal,  it  is  a  carefully 
made  contribution  to  biographical  literature,  an  appreciation  of  the 
work  of  a  man  who  was  a  poet  before  he  was  a  philosopher,  and  a 
pathetic  account  of  a  life  of  heroism  and  suffering  which  was  closely 
linked  to  other  beautiful  lives." — The  Dial,  Chicago. 

"The  biography  is  ably  written,  and  deals  not  only  with  Marx  as 
an  individual,  but  with  the  whole  European  Liberal  movement  in  the 
third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century."  H  *  Mr.  Spargo  has  pro- 
duced a  book  inviting  perusal  as  the  portraiture  of  a  man  apart  from 
any  acceptance  of  his  views." — The  Press.  Philadelphia. 
6H x9'  •;  359  pages;  beautifully  printed;  strongly  and  handsomely  bound; 
full  index  and  many  ilhutrations,  including  some  rare  portrait!  of  Marx 
and  his  contemporaries.  $2. SO  net,  at  all  bookstores;  $2.70  prepaid. 


B.  W.  HUEBSCH,  Publisher 


NEW  YORK 


RECENT     BOOKS     BY      JOHN     SPARGO 
Sidelights  on  Contemporary  Socialism 

1 2mo,'-  boards,  postpaid,  $1 .08 

"Like  several  of  the  author's  earlier  works,  this  volume  is  made 
up  of  three  lectures  by  him,  from  time  to  time,  and  revised  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  publication  in  book  form.  It  is  the  first  work  by 
the  author  since  his  life  of  Marx  appeared.  Unlike  the  lectures  from 
which  the  earlier  volumes  were  developed,  lectures  addressed  to  non- 
Socialists,  those  included  in  this  new  book  were  specifically  addressed 
to  the  members  of  that  party.  They  were  designed  to  define  the  au- 
thor's position  in  the  party,  for  the  strife  between  Socialist  and  non- 
Socialist  is  no  greater  than  that  between  'opportunist'  and  'revolu- 
tionary' within  the  Socialist  ranks. 

"Mr.  Spargo  writes  clearly  and  simply.  He  knows  how  to  impart 
the  result  of  his  study.  He  is  balanced  and  never  falls  into  the  pit- 
_fall  of  exaggeration  or  lets  enthusiasm  run  away  with  his  logic.  He 
is  an  intellectual  thinker,  not  an  emotional  theorist.  He  realizes  that 
vital  social  and  economic  problems  are  not  the  peculiar  property  of 
the  philosopher,  but  they  are  for  the  man  in  the  street,  with  whom 
lies — to  a  great  extent — the  material  solution  of  the  problems." — 
Brooklyn  Times. 

The  Substance  of   Socialism 

1 2 mo,  boards,  postpaid,  $1.08 

"Mr.  Spargo's  style,  clear  and  persuasive^  in  showing  what  Social- 
ism is,  becomes,  in  showing  what  Socialism  is  not — in  brushing 
away  the  theorizing  which  has  been  permitted  to  obscure  its  prin- 
ciples— bold  and  direct.  *  *  *  The  Substance  of  Socialism,  with  its 
common  sense,  its  frank  idealism  and  its  freedom  from  intellectual 
hocus-pocus,  is  bound  to  make  a  deep  impression  on  all  non-Socialists 
who  read  it.  To  such  as  protest  that  this  is  a  new  story,  the  author 
is  ready  cheerfully  to  concede  that  'no  small  part  of  the  work  of  the 
Socialists  of  to-day  consists  in  undoing  the  work  of  an  older  genera- 
tion of  Socialists.  And  to  readers  of  his  own  faith  he  offers  an  op- 
portunity to  rejoice  with  him  that,  'now,  at  last,  American  Socialism 
is  beginning  *  *  *  to  throw  off  the  shackles  of  an  impotent  and 
crude  "Marxism"  which  caricatured  every  essential  feature  of  Marx's 
teaching.'  " — Floyd  Dell  in  Chicago  Evening  Post. 

The  Spiritual  Significance  of  Modern  Socialism 

1 2mo,  boards,  postpaid,  55  cents 

"To  Spargo,  Socialism  is  something  more  than  an  economic  theory; 
it  is  a  splendid  idealistic  movement,  tinged  with  ethical  ideals  replete 
with  essential  Christianity  and  leading  on  to  a  kingdom  of  God  upon 
earth.  He  is  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word  a  religious  Socialist.  He 
excuses  the  earlier  Socialists  for  their  irreligion,  but  believes  that  the 
association  of  Socialism  with  dogmatic  atheism  was  an  accidental  re- 
sult. His  little  book  is  one  that  will  make  the  reader  thrill  with  the 
author's  own  enthusiasm,  even  though  he  cannot  hold  to  Socialism 
as  a  final  form  of  social  organization.  Any  one  who  reads  it  will 
appreciate  as  never  before  why  it  is  that  Socialism  appeals  to  ideal- 
ists."— The  World  To-Day. 

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